You may remember that last year we partnered with some other brilliant satirists to run a Secret Santa for underprivileged children.

Well it really, really took off and created a life of its own. The lovely followers of NewsThump, Southend News Network, Tuckered and Angry People in Local Newspapers donated a gobsmacking 28,000 presents to children who would otherwise have had little or nothing to open on Christmas morning. It was incredibly heartwarming.

All over the UK there are tens of thousands of children living in poverty and in care who really won’t have much to look forward to over Christmas – we are hoping that like last year we can do our bit to make that a bit better.

We have partnered with a whole bunch of charities who specialise in the distribution of toys and gifts to vulnerable children including Cash4Kids-Mission Christmas, Barnardos, Rochdale Giving Back and The Salvation Army and will be sending them lots of presents.

The first is Reading Family Aid’s Toys & Teens Appeal 2018 (you can read more about them here: Reading Family Aid).

They have kindly given us some guidance on the sort of toys that prove popular, and those that are most in demand – you will no doubt be surprised to see a distinct lack of xBoxes, but lots of footballs, felt-tips and toys for very young children. These kids are not fortunate enough to have had the chance to develop expensive tastes.

So how can you donate? We have set up an Amazon wish-lists for these items, where ANY item purchased will be sent directly to the charity concerned for distribution to a child that will be incredibly grateful to receive it.

You can find these lists here: Satire Aid 2018

So – what can you do to help? Firstly, please go and visit the link above and see if there is a gift you would like to donate to a child in need this Christmas, and pay for it through Amazon like you would anything else you would buy. At checkout choose the delivery address for the nominated charity of the day and that gift will then go DIRECTLY to the charity within 24 hours. Secondly, please share this post as widely as possible so it can do as much good as possible.

Due to the logistics involved in getting these presents sorted and to the children that most need them, we will be changing the charity receiving the gifts every few days, so please consider donating today.

Treat this like you would the office secret Santa, except we’ve made it really easy for you to do something amazing, instead of giving Dave in accounts yet another pint glass with his name on it. Let’s see if we can all brighten a few tiny faces on Christmas day.

Thank you for reading, and hopefully for sharing with your friends.

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.