Katelyn McCann, who attends St Peter the Apostle High School, is currently working towards the Caritas Award — which involves undertaking charity work in both school and parish.

The 17-year-old is among 30 sixth year pupils taking part in the Mary’s Meals Backpack Project, which sees the collection of educational materials for kids in third world Africa.

Katelyn said: “I’ll be honest, I never used to be interested in charity work, which sounds selfish, I know. But starting the Caritas Award in school has opened many opportunities for me and basically opened my eyes to charity. It’s great helping people out and it makes you feel much better as a person.” The Pope Benedict XVI Caritas Award was introduced in 2011 by the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland to recognise and promote the active faith commitment of young people in their final year of secondary school.

There are 41 sixth year, and eight S5 pupils involved with the award this year.

“We’re doing this project all the way through advent,” Katelyn told the Post. “The pupils in St Peter the Apostle High School all take turns at collecting things and we make sure everyone takes part in doing it.

“We are collecting educational materials for children who don’t have as much as us. This includes school bags, pencils, pens, rubbers, rulers, notepads etc — all the way up to clothes.” The pupils will be collecting items on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at lunch time in the school and have already used St Eunan’s Hall to kick-start their gathering on Sunday (November 30).

English teacher Áine Lynch is coordinating the Caritas Awards effort and told how the pupils have taken a whole range of activities up for the project.

She said: “They’re running the Mary’s Meals project, homeless shelter, going out with local parishioners, volunteering at the Golden Jubilee Hospital, soup kitchen and loads more things too.

“I’m confident that they’re going to do well - last year there was just 10 of them doing it, now there’s 49 involved — they’re running the school.” The school made headlines in September for raising funds for Malawi, when deputy head Michael Rainey paddled the length of Loch Lomond in a canoe to raise funds for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, and again in October with the S6 pupils’ extensive work with the homeless of Glasgow’s East End.