A CREATIVE six-year-old girl with 'a big heart' has collected 10,000 pens and pencils to donate to disadvantaged children.

Hazel Pownall, from Latchford, has been on the lookout for donations of craft materials to give to those in need for the past month.

In that time she has managed to collect more than 10,000 pens and pencils from kind-hearted residents and business, as well as other items of craft equipment that will be given to families that are down on their luck in order to spread the youngster's creative spark.

Step dad Danny Horobin said: "Hazel is always collecting things for crafts, from making cards to writing her own stories.

"We're lucky because she can have the access to equipment to allow her to express herself creatively, but she knows that not everyone is in the same situation.

"It started off as something nice and little but she's been really pushing it.

"This time of year is a time of goodwill, and by the power of social media loads of people have come forward.

"We've managed to collect over 10,000 pencils and we've already donated them to families who have been finding it a bit hard over Christmas.

"There was one family with a three-year-old, a six-year-old and a 10-year-old whose parents had lost their jobs - it was spiralling out of control for them so we donated a bin bag full of stuff to them.”

Hazel is now planning to put on arts and crafts sessions for disadvantaged children in the New Year.

A regular in the gym at David Lloyd in Sankey Bridges, where her step dad works as events coordinator, she is also preparing for some big charity fundraising challengers.

Danny added: "There are a lot of little things that we want to do once we get our voice out there, but all of this has come from a six-year-old who wants to do it because she wants to be nice.

"Hazel is quite well-known in David Lloyd - she's a part of the team and everyone always asks how her project has been going.

"She's doing a sponsored weight lift, a sponsored pencil dive in the swimming pool and she's climbing the three peaks next year.

"When she's old enough she wants to travel to Africa to help to build schools and she wants to do a sponsored sky dive.

"Hazel always says that you should do good things because good things will happen to you.

"If she has that instilled in her at six years old I'm just looking forward to seeing how she grows up, because she's got big muscles and a big heart - she's quite a character."