Up to 500 Royal Mail staff will back a campaign to help soldiers serving overseas after reading a girl's plea for support.

Workers at the Leicester Mail Centre, in Meridian Business Park, are planning to collect thousands of stamps for the Support Our Soldiers (SOS) appeal.

Staff at the post company decided to help after seeing a letter from Alex Windram in the Leicester Mercury asking people to send their stamps to the charity.

The eight-year-old from Braunstone Town has a 30-year-old cousin called Colin, who is serving in Afghanistan.

She has already begun collecting stamps from family members, friends from the 3rd Braunstone Brownies, and her parent's work colleagues.

Support Our Soldiers will use money generated from the stamps to send morale-boosting care parcels – including food, clothes and magazines – to British troops.

It also pays for family support and offers help to soldiers who have been injured.

Bhawna Chauhan, resource manager at Royal Mail, was touched by the letter and pledged to get workers on board.

She said: "We'll be getting 500 of our staff to start bringing their stamps into work so we can help out and send them on to the charity.

"We all saw Alex's letter in the Mercury and were really touched by it. It's a very worthy cause so we're happy to do all we can to help. We've got a lot of people working here so I'm confident we'll be able to collect a lot of stamps."

Alex's mum, Mandy Windram, 30, said: "I was on the SOS forum one night and she saw me looking at details of the collection appeal and started asking about it and if she could collect.

"She said she would ask at school and at Brownies and then she started to make boxes for people to collect them in.

"She has been collecting for about three to four weeks and the response has been brilliant.

"Because we have family out there it is nice to see her getting so involved with the appeal.

"We are a really close family and we want to do as much as we can for Colin.

"It is brilliant to see the younger generation getting involved. For somebody as young as Alex to get involved is great.

"She has done it all off her own bat. I am really proud of her. I asked her why she wanted to collect stamps and she said she wanted to say thank-you."

British, Foreign and Commonwealth stamps can be sent to Support Our Soldiers at SOS Stamp Appeal, PO Box 691, Barnsley S70 9JR.