A charity based in Aldershot needs somewhere to store the donated food it is collecting for homeless people.

The Hampshire Youth Bureau used the basement of its headquarters in Victoria Road for storage in the past but that is being refitted after flooding damaged it last November and destroyed what had been collected for the Christmas period.

Its staff and volunteers are visiting schools and churches across Rushmoor during their harvest festival celebrations to collect long-life foods such as canned goods which they give to homeless and vulnerably housed under-25s.

Staff are storing what they can in a small alcove in a room of their office but have at least another 20 schools and some churches to visit and make collections from.

Stella Olivier, the chairman of trustees, said: “We’re going to be really busy collecting from schools for the next few weeks. Now is when we talk to the schools about why we do this and collect from them. At the moment we are looking to put it somewhere.”

The bureau collects essentials like toiletries and food, oft-en canned, which can be easily stored and distributed.

Ms Olivier added: “I was at Beaumont Junior School in Aldershot and was explaining what we do in terms of a day in the life of someone we help. That way we explain what we need before they have their harvest festivals so that they can raise it for us. We have been looking at premises and need somewhere bigger but we can’t afford to hire somewhere expensive and we are short of one member of staff.”

Ms Olivier recently viewed premises the Army offered her, which were unsuitable. She said: “It was up four flights of stairs. You can’t carry all these bags around in that. The Army helped me before to find space. They have been helpful in the past. But so far they’ve not found any. They were going to put us in a hall but it was full of asbestos.”

The Army have previously helped her with other charity ventures including Age Concern and Farnborough Community Centre. She said: “I’ve got lots of charity hats and I always go after the Army. I don’t know anyone else who has large premises we could have on the cheap. We can’t afford to hire from anyone private.” 

Last month fundraiser Peter Malcolm wrote to schools and churches to ask if they were interested in having a representative visit and explain what the charity does and solicit donations.

He said: “We do harvest festival so that schools can prepare for this.

“Last year we had a total of 32 schools and some churches and so far we have had about 22 schools and three or four churches, which is about right.

“Schools have their harvest festivals at different times and what normally happens is more sort of dribbles through to some extent. But that’s not happening so far. I don’t know whether that’s got anything to do with the climate of financial problems. We’ve collected from two schools so far and we’re collecting from 20 more until October 26.   

“It would be good if we could get somewhere that’s in the region of 20ft square and where we can put up shelving.”

Ms Olivier said: “If anybody else has got premises that they could let we’d love to hear from them. We are talking about the size of one of our charity shops. It would be best if it could be near to the town cen-tre of Aldershot or Farnborough.

“We would be driving to drop stuff off so it would have to be somewhere we could have our own pair of keys too, otherwise we’d be bothering people trying to get in.”

Mr Malcolm said: “We don’t have vans. Our volunteers take their own cars and fill them up with bags of food. We have had problems with parking but we’re used to getting a ticket every year.”