KIND-HEARTED children at Lochgelly West Primary school have finished their long-awaited tin trail, collecting more than 2000 tins and raising over £1000 for Dunfermline Food Bank, which has helped establish the highly successful Benarty facility and is sponsoring the opening of the Cowdenbeath bank in 2015.

Back in October, the youngsters set themselves the Tin Trail Challenge in an attempt to collect as many tins of food as possible to be able to donate them to the cause by Christmas.

Their goal was to gather enough to line the West Way, the path that runs around the perimeter of the school.

On Thursday, the children and staff gathered together with members of the community to celebrate their achievement, showing off their trail of 2000 tins and also presenting the foodbank with a cheque for £1172.33.

The children from the school’s Primary 3S class have been leading the charge and were out in force in Lochgelly over the course of the project, visiting local businesses, shops and organisations to ask for their support.

They set up drop-off points in the library and in many shops and businesses as a way of involving the whole community, even managing to enlist the help of the local fire service and community police.

As well as collecting tins, the children also wanted to raise some money for the food bank. They got involved in a series of fundraising events, from bag-packing to taking part in a sponsored walk which was attended by children, staff, parents and members of the community. Morag Steele, headteacher at Lochgelly West, said, “I am delighted with the response we have seen from the local community; everyone has supported us and should feel extremely proud of what they have achieved.

“The children have been motivated to learn and have enjoyed being so involved in their local community.

“The project has also provided a very real context for the development of skills in numeracy, literacy and many other areas of the curriculum.” The cheque was presented to John Drylie, chairman of Dunfermline Foodbank, by Mr John Gibbons, Lochgelly Citizen of the year 2014, Remi Haddow, Junior Citizen of the year 2014 and Sarah Pratt, Junior Citizen of the year 2015.

Mr Drylie said, “I’m ecstatic with the donations from the school.

“It’s amazing what the pupils have done in a short period of time. It will help us enormously, as at this time of year we are seeing the number of people coming to us go up.”