A GRANGE-over-Sands student will head off to Kenya this summer to take part in a charity project helping orphaned children.

Connie Jacobs, aged 20, is one of 27 students from Warwick University who will spend two weeks in August assisting vulnerable youngsters in the African country.

She is supporting the Kenyan Orphan Project (KOP), a charity which provides both immediate aid and long-term support to orphans and vulnerable children in Kenya.

It works to improve areas including health, education and social welfare, while fighting poverty, disease, social exclusion and injustice.

Through a variety of projects including schools, feeding centres, hospitals and educational programmes, KOP aims to improve the lives of children and give them hope for the future.

Connie is hoping to raise at least £800 for the registered charity and is looking for sponsorship from local Cumbrian firms and people – and promises that every penny that is given will go directly to the children in Kenya.

The former Cartmel Secondary School and Lancaster Girls' Grammar School pupil lives in Grange, and her mother Wendy is head teacher of Roose Primary School in Barrow-in-Furness.

Her journalist father Bill works for The Westmorland Gazette's sister paper the Lancashire Telegraph and she has a 17-year-old sister Thea at Ulverston Grammar School.

Connie said: “I think the Kenyan Orphan Project does valuable supportive work with children and has a very real impact both in both the short and the long term.

“It aims to improve children's immediate lives but also to help them have better prospects in the future, and through the trip to Kenya we will have direct contact with children, be given the opportunity to see where our money goes and offer practical support through our volunteering.

“I am looking forward to my trip to see the difference which the money I raise can make.

“Through my two weeks of volunteering I will be able to gain a much better understanding of how the children live, the opportunities and hardships they face and what else I can do to make a difference.

“I am also looking forward to seeing the different culture and mentality of Kenya because one of my best friends in Grange is Kenyan and she has told me so much about it.” To support Connie’s fund-raising for the charity trip, see www.justgiving. com/ Connie-Jacobs