Some children might spend their spare time staring at screens, but not Dara Adawole.

That’s because 10-year-old Dara is too busy helping homeless people in Barking and Dagenham by handing out her ‘blessing bags’ full of basic essentials many of us take for granted.

“It’s important to help them because we are all people. They might have made a few mistakes with money, but it doesn’t mean you should treat them like animals or pets.

“They are the same as us,” Dara said.

Kind-hearted Dara, who runs her Care Girl website from her home in Thurrock, collects donations and sells homemade candles to raise money to fill bags with toiletries which she gives rough sleepers in the borough.

And in winter she puts hats, gloves and scarves inside.

Her mum Tutu, a GP at St Albans Surgery in Urswick Road, Dagenham, said: “We’re extremely proud of her.

“She has made us much more conscious of the fact that other people don’t have the things we take for granted.”

Tutu and her husband, alongside Dara, now volunteer for the action group Nightingale Angels UK which also looks out for the homeless in Barking and Dagenham by handing out clothes, food and personal hygiene products.

Dara, who wants to be a fashion designer when she’s older, even turns down birthday presents preferring to give gifts to the less fortunate on her special day.

“It’s important to donate because some people are living in horrible conditions. It’s unfair for them to be uncomfortable while we stay at home.

“We only have one life. If you don’t live it well you can’t live it again,” Dara said.

The keen cook who also enjoys drumming was aged six when she came up with the idea of helping.

It was during travels through the capital with her parents that Dara saw people living rough and asked if they could stop to give some money.

“I felt so sorry for them,” Dara said.

Since then she has taken her ‘blessing bags’ to The Source Drop In, a charity run by Barking Churches Unite and based in Vicarage Fields Shopping Centre.

To donate visit caregirl.org.