Young baker's sweet way to help Dudley Zoo

Since seeing a news story about the animals of Dudley Zoo, Grace Leach has been organising events with her mother and grandmother to help raise funds for the zoo.

The nine-year-old, who goes to school at Tipton Green Junior School, has spent the last week preparing cakes and collecting prizes for an online raffle, which took place on Saturday, June 13

Her grandmother Diane Clarke said Grace had gotten very upset when she saw the news story about the zoo.

She said: "Grace was watching the news and got upset, thinking that the animals would not be getting any food, as she's a proper animal lover and her favourite animal is a lemur.

"She also adopted an orang-utan last year from Dudley Zoo for her birthday, so she decided she wanted to do something to help."

Since an appeal was put out for donations to the raffle on Tuesday, Grace received prizes such as chocolates, bottles of wine and free meals from local Indian and fish and chip restaurants from around the community.

Diane spoke about how proud she and Grace's mother Sarah were of Grace and what she had accomplished over the last week.

She said: "It's absolutely lovely to see what Grace has been going this week for the animals and I remember the look on her face when we said we could do something, which was just pure joy.

"When the kids are happy, we're all happy and it means to the world to see her doing this."

The raffle draw was done over Facebook Live and the prizes are set to be sent out to the winners in the next week.

Diane also said Sarah would be making a trip down to the Zoo with Grace to personally hand over the money raised from ticket sale, which is currently more than £700.

She also said Grace would be holding a cake sale and was already thinking of other ways to raise funds for the zoo.