A Hampshire Schoolgirl has made blankets using empty crisp packets for the homeless people of Gosport and Fareham.
Teya Bye, aged 7, is a year 2 pupil at Hook-with-Warsash School who uses her spare time making blankets for the homeless. She was inspired by a Facebook video explaining how to turn empty crisp packets into blankets, and decided to collect 150 packets for the project. She has since collected over 1060.
Teya and her mother, Eve, reached out to their local ‘Crisp Packet Project’, and has spoken with their regional manager for Gosport and the surrounding areas, Karen Philips.
The CPP is a self-funded volunteer project with the goal of ‘giving life to one use plastics and saving lives… Working with homeless charities to distribute these items.’ Founded in Hastings, the project now has bases across the world, in France, Portugal, America, Canada and Australia.
The crisp packets need to be cut to lie flat and washed with soapy water and dried before they can be used. Eve has said ‘it did feel like our house was being taken over by crisp packets.’
She added: ‘Teya is a very kind and determined girl. She likes helping others and feels very strongly about the environment.’
A study in 2017 showed that Gosport was a homelessness hotspot, with 1 in every 160 people homeless. The New Forest also has a high rate of homelessness with 1 in 201. Nationwide, 1 in every 200 people is homeless, but this statistic may rise significantly due to the prolonged effects of Covid-19 on the economy.
