We'd heard that St Mary's Hull in the diocese of Middlesbrough was a really active social justice school, so we called the lay chaplain, Chris Cuthill, to give us the run down on the last 18 months.

Chris explains, "It all started at The Briars youth centre in the Nottingham Diocese. Tom Baptist, the youth worker there, did some work with our school group and introduced the students to Fair Trade. They've not stopped since.

"The Year 10s got the Year 8s enthused too and they run the Fair Trade stall at school - they've done £5-6,000 of trade in two years!"

The school is no stranger to livesimply, students having written and recorded a special livesimply song last year to raise money for CAFOD. 

And the school doesn't stop there.  They wanted to raise £1700 for a classroom through Oxfam Unwrapped, "but we raised £2000 in the 4 weeks of Advent. Next year we'll do a Lent fundraiser too and tie it in to the livesimply themes," Chris says.

The school's actions for social justice aren't focused overseas either: "we took over from an aging SVP group reading articles gleaned from the Catholic press which are put on CD as a Talking Newspaper for visually-impaired people," Chris says, "and we send out eight editions a year."

"Each month, a group of Year 9 students help out at a Housebound Day at St Stephen's, a local centre, serving the elderly at table and helping with the various activities."

"The sixth formers also go every week to help out at a homeless shelter (pictured right).  It's an amazing Christian witness to the rest of the school and the local community. livesimply and particularly the call to live in solidarity is really important to us at the school."