THE youth homelessness charity SASH is urging local restaurants to help support its services to young people this Christmas.

SASH prevents youth homelessness by offering emergency and longer term accommodation in the homes of volunteers across North Yorkshire.

Last year the charity helped nearly 400 young people who were facing homelessness. Each young person was placed with one of SASH’s volunteers, who offer their spare room as a safe place to stay, and who work with SASH to help young people move on into their own accommodation.

To help raise funds for the charity’s work in the region, SASH is looking for local pubs and restaurants to support its Eat. Drink. Give. campaign this festive season.

For an eight-week period in the run-up to Christmas, diners at participating restaurants will be invited to add a £1 voluntary donation per table to their bill.

Last year the campaign ran with 12 restaurants in York, where it raised more than £10,000 for SASH.

This year SASH are welcoming restaurants from across the whole region that they provide their services.

Jill Greetham, from The Royal Oak Inn, in Nunnington, said she would be supporting the initiative and has already signed up to take part.

She said: "Before moving back to England, while living in Italy, I did see lots of young ones sleeping rough outside the stations in Florence. I said then that when I got back to England I would try and find a way to help the homeless.

"I have been homeless myself as a teenager, but in my day there was no such organisation to help. Luckily my homelessness didn’t last long as I took myself off abroad where my love affair with Italy began.

"Some friends did a sleep out in York fundraising for SASH earlier this year and it was amazing how everyone thought it was a worthwhile cause and contributed willingly, so I decided to contact SASH and offer to go with their campaign Eat.Drink.Give for six weeks over the Christmas period."

Emma Bracegirdle, community fundraiser at SASH, said: “SASH is increasingly dependent on fundraising within the local communities where we work in order to provide our services. Eat.Drink.Give. was so successful in York last year, we are sure there is lots of potential for local businesses to make a big difference to some of the most vulnerable young people in North Yorkshire. We’d be delighted to hear from anyone who would like to support Eat.Drink.Give. this year.”

There is no cost to the restaurants that participate and SASH will offer full information and training to staff.

For more information visit sash-uk.org.uk or phone Emma Bracegirdle or Gary Hogg on 01904 652043 or email emma.bracegirdle@sash-uk.org.uk or gary.hogg@sash-uk.org.uk