Along with the very fine and folk at NewsThump and The Southend News Network we have put together what we think could be one of the biggest attempts at a Secret Santa ever.
Around the country while the rest of us spend the run up to Christmas buying presents and eating too much there are thousands upon thousands of children who are going without. These children aren’t going to presents at Christmas, they include children living in poverty, children in care, kids who are waiting to be adopted and children who have fled domestic violence with their mothers and are hiding women’s refuges.
Whatever the reasons for them being in these situations they deserve some love, some joy and some presents to open on Christmas morning.
We’ve partnered with three charities, in Reading, Rochdale and Southend, who specialise in distributing toys and gifts to the children who really need them (Reading Family Aid’s Toys and Teens Appeal 2017, Rochdale Giving Back Christmas Toy Appeal and Southend on Sea Borough Council Toy Drive).
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 colouring in books, felt-tips and books to read. These children are not fortunate enough to have had the chance to develop expensive tastes.
We have also set up two Amazon wish-lists for these items, where ANY item purchased will be sent directly to the charity for distribution to a child that will be incredibly grateful to receive it.
You can find these lists here: http://bit.ly/satiresecretsanta
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. 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 to the families concerned, the cut off date for donations for the reading appeal is the 5th December, so we would hugely appreciate it if you could share this post far and wide 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 a 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.
