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More than 100 schoolchildren have penned letters of friendship and hope for Liverpool’s homeless as part of a Valentine’s Day project Wrapping Liverpool in Love.

They will be attached to scarves and tied around lampposts and trees in the city centre in the hope that passers by will take them to someone in need.

The idea for Wrapping Liverpool in Love first came when Michelle Langan spotted something similar in Canada.

“It had been really successful there, so I shared it on my Facebook and Twitter and lots of people commented how brilliant it was and how we should do something like that in Liverpool,” she says.

“I knew once I started it I’d get plenty of support from people keen to get involved.”

Michelle, who lives in Wavertree, pitched the idea to Awesome Liverpool just before Christmas and secured some funding for it. “Then I promoted it on social media and volunteers came forward offering their help to tie the scarves.”

Some have been donated and others Michelle has bought from charity shops, but the second part of the project means she’ll carry on collecting up until Sunday.

“I thought it would be nice to have an extra element and make it more about the wider community so I got in touch with Merchant Taylor’s Junior School in Crosby to see if they’d like to be a part of it.

“I did an exhibition last year , telling the stories of homeless people in Liverpool, and one of my friends’ little boys came along. He was really intrigued by it and was asking me lots of questions. He went and did his own project in school about homelessness afterwards so when I was doing Wrapping Liverpool in Love I thought it would be good to get children involved in that and increase their awareness.”

The school was keen to join in and Michelle went along to talk to a year group of eight and nine-year-olds about homelessness.

“They were so interested, and one boy even put his hand up and asked if he could give some of his pocket money to the homeless,” she says. “I told them they could write or draw anything they wanted on their message, just to think what would cheer them up if they were on the street.”

She came away with 150 heartfelt notes, which will each be attached to a scarf for tying.

“What they’ve written is lovely,” says Michelle. “They say things like ‘you are not alone’ and ‘people do care, we’re thinking of you.’ They’ve really thought about what they wanted to say.”

Michelle and her team of volunteers will now get together in the city centre on Sunday and set about Wrapping Liverpool in Love for Valentine’s Day.

“I’d really like people to take the scarves and give them to a homeless person,” she explains. “A lot of homeless people don’t have any conversation all day, so if people give them a scarf then they can have a chat at the same time. Even if it’s just ‘hello, how are you?’ it’s a little bit of conversation they might not have had otherwise and it gives people a reason to engage with someone sleeping on the street without any embarrassment.

“If they can get a scarf with a lovely little message from a child, letting them know someone’s thinking about them, it might make someone homeless feel happier for a couple of hours and it’s so cold at the moment hopefully they’ll be a bit warmer too.”

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