A TAVISTOCK man who has recently returned from a charity trip to Madagascar has issued a big thank-you to West Devon residents and businesses who responded to his appeal for help in the Times recently.

Maurice Larose, a language teacher at Launceston College, saw at first hand the ?heartbreaking? levels of child poverty and the plight of children living on the streets while he was in Madagascar.

He said: ?Thousands of children live on the streets, either because they are abandoned or their parents cannot feed them.

?During the day they roam the street trying to do little jobs or begging for food and at night they only have the pavement for a bed.?

Mr Larose said life was ?disturbingly unsafe? for the street children and said poverty levels on Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, were shocking.

?There are entire families living on the streets,? said Mr Larose, who raised more than £3,500 for the street children.

?One association was ever so grateful for the £800 it received, as this was going to enable them to feed 100 children, pay the rent and wages of the helpers for a month ? just at a time they had run out of funds,? he said.

Mr Larose said links have now been established with agencies helping the poor in the country?s capital, Antananarivo, in the hope that more aid will be able to be sent to help the street children in the future.