Footie joy for African orphans (From Wiltshire Times)

Footie joy for African orphans

9:07am Sunday 30th December 2007 in Melksham By Benjamin Parkes

A MELKSHAM company has sent hundreds of football shirts to orphans in Malawi.

Employees of the local company, Knorr-Bremse Rail Systems shipped more than 400 football shirts to the children in Africa.

Workers Alex Coombs and Rob Davey came up with the project after they both did a work placement in a Malawi hospital.

Mr Coombs said: "We thought it would be nice to take gifts for the children in the form of a few football shirts and were amazed at the reaction they provoked.

"However, there were more children than shirts so I had the idea of enlisting the help of brother and father who also work at Knorr-Bremse.

"We tried to collect more shirts so that every child could receive one and with the support of the managing director of the company, Paul Johnson, we managed to get more than 400 shirts donated from fellow employees ready for shipping to Malawi."

Alex's father, Mark Coombs said: "When Alex asked for our support we were delighted to help. I would like to thank all the employees of KBRS who generously donated a shirt or in many cases batches of shirts."

DSV of Purfleet shipped the shirts. Managing director Graham Riches offered to ship the shirts free of charge when he heard about the initiative.