PARISHIONERS have been serving up soup and giving up chocolate to raise money for a community centre in Syria.

Volunteers from Our Lady of Grace, Chiswick, are currently collecting money for this year's Lenten project, which is hoping to fund improvements to a diocesan centre in the city of Aleppo, 130 miles north of Damascus.

The city has a population of 1.1 million and is the main centre for Christians in Syria.

The community of 15,000 Catholic Christians is still a relatively small minority, but it is growing at a fast rate.

By holding regular soup mornings throughout Lent and collecting donations the parish is helping to finance extensions to a centre which carries out youth work and other educational activities. One floor of the building will also house the Archbishop and students for the priesthood.

Previous Lenten projects have included raising £36,000 to fund homes for the poor in the Philippines and collecting for a human rights centre in a Peruvian town.

Parishioners are asked to put aside the money they would have spent on the items they have given up for Lent and then donate it to the project.

Almost £1020 has been raised, with an impressive target of £20,000 when all the lent donations are collected in.