THE local charity Bury African Outreach donates used football kits to schoolboy teams in Matabeleland because, since 1992, schools there have been without money even for books and pens, let alone soccer kits! Parents are even asked for fees, so some children can't attend school any more.

Mwele Primary School collected pennies and sent us a "thank you" card for their football shirts and shorts and I later returned to this distant, dusty school with a football to replace their home-made one. As the girls cheered, the boys proudly played a match in their Bury FC colours - with a proper football.

A lady teacher asked me: "Is there anything for the girls?" So I'm now asking Bury Times readers if they have any used girls netball kits I could take on my trip there next month.

Incidentally, the campaigns to "Bury the Debt" - that is to cancel Third World debt - if successful will help to return some of the money lost to education. Please support it.

FRANK MORAN, BETSY KEATING,

28 Brookside Crescent,

Greenmount, Bury.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.