Volunteers have started packing rucksacks to distribute to those sleeping rough on the streets of east London.

East London Advertiser: Volunteers and Muslim Aid charity staff who have been packing 'winter survival' rucksacks to give out to rough sleepers this Christmas. Picture: Muslim AidVolunteers and Muslim Aid charity staff who have been packing 'winter survival' rucksacks to give out to rough sleepers this Christmas. Picture: Muslim Aid (Image: Muslim Aid)

It involves 70 students and young people packing 600 rucksacks at the Muslim Aid charity’s Whitechapel headquarters.

Each rucksack has a sleeping bag, hat, gloves, socks, base layer clothing, food and plastic cutlery.

The rucksacks are being given out to those on the streets of the East End as well as other inner city areas of London and Manchester, some through homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

Sociology student Naim Ali, 21, started voluntary work for the charity when he was a child.

“I helped my uncles rattle buckets for street collections,” he recalls. “It’s a great way to help people who are in need.”

Student Ruhena Begum, 19, from Forest Gate, who is studying criminology and criminal justice at East London University, has been thinking about people in the cold less fortunate than herself.

She said: “I’m glad to have a home and food and think about people who don’t have this, so I want to be part of the charity helping them.”

The Muslim Aid charity, which was set up in the UK in 1985 responding to the drought in the Horn of Africa, works in 50 countries today, through emergency responses tackling poverty with sustainable solutions “for communities to live with dignity”.