Warm-hearted pupils at an Exeter high school are raising money to allow students at their twin college in war-torn Bosnia to visit the city.

And they have enlisted some powerful allies in their campaign including city MP Ben Bradshaw and the airline Air France.

Students from St Peter's High visited the Gimnasja Banja Luka in Bosnia last year.

St Peter's has modern languages specialist college status and pupils regularly video-conference with their colleagues in Bosnia as well as other European countries.

Nine Bosnian students were due to visit Exeter this month but four of the party have been unable to raise the funds as the country is so poor.

Now students at St Peter's have decided to help raise funds with the help of staff at the school.

When they went to Bosnia last year their flight was delayed and Air France gave them some vouchers for further flights. The airline has now agreed to convert them to help the four Bosnians fly to Britain.

St Peter's student Chloe Grieve wrote to Mr Bradshaw asking if there was any way he could help and the MP has taken up the matter with the Foreign Office.

And students are organising a disco and have also hosted a Wine and Cheese evening at The Globe Hotel in Topsham.

The students persuaded award-winning Topsham cheese shop Country Cheeses, Topsham Wines and Green Valley Cider to help out with supplies for the evening.

Assistant headteacher Alison Sykes is leading the international dimension to the school.

She said: 'When we achieved specialist college status we believed it would be a wonderful opportunity to work with local schools, Exeter College and local businesses to develop language learning across the city.

'We were also very excited about forging lasting links with students, teachers and business people from other countries.

'Our links with Bosnia and the way our students are pitching in to help their counterparts is a measure of how firm those links have become in a comparatively short time.

'We are now very hopeful that these efforts will allow the Bosnian party to visit us next month and we are already looking forward to that.

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