Staff at a charity supporting families with young children living in poverty have said they were left “heartbroken” after discovering their HQ had been broken into.
The Leeds Baby Bank, in Armley, was believed to have been raided between Thursday night and Friday morning, with laptops, phones and iPads stolen from its Wellington Road premises.
The charity has since launched a fundraising campaign to cover the cost of the stolen goods, and that had already surpassed its original £6,500 target by later on Friday.
Unit manager Sarah Cohen said although charity was at a “standstill” following the break-in, the “outpouring of love from the whole city has been incredible”.
Cohen said that after arriving at work at 07:30 BST on Friday, she noticed one of the building’s windows had been smashed.
“My stomach sank. It was horrible – it looked really horrible”, she said.
Soon after, staff realised two internal doors had been damaged and a number of electronic devices had been stolen.
Cohen explained: “They’ve gone through the kitchen, broken into the warehouse at the back and stolen all our laptops and iPads. We can’t function with them.
“We can’t gather the information we need off our Customer Relationship Management system to phone families to see what they need for referrals because we haven’t got the laptops.
“We can’t do any referrals – we’ve just come to a standstill.”
Cohen added that the charity, which supports children up to the age of five, currently had 86 referrals on its system, none of which could be processed due to the devices being stolen.
