The hamper appeal required some items and just like Father Christmas 🎅🏼, The James Beattie Charitable Trust stepped in and helped the appeal 🎉🎉🎉 we cannot thank you enough Vicki, and the trust for helping so many families in Wolverhampton have a nicer Christmas! This is just a part of the donations we managed to get with the amazing financial contribution.

Background

The hamper appeal started 11 years ago now when my then 4 year old daughter saw an advert on the television for children that do not get anything at Christmas and asked if she could give a couple of things from her Santa list to them as she was upset, this then pushed me to write a small post only Facebook page and we ended up sending about 20 toys to The Haven in Wolverhampton, it has literally evolved over the years and had gone from strength to strength. Last year for example we supported 171 families to include 260 children, this year we are helping 211 families and over 450 children!

We rely solely on donations and I operate from my living room! We used to use the offices at my work to store the items and to build the hampers…but unfortunately our offices were sold and so we now work from home. We have only managed to do the appeal this year due to very kind people offering out their garages and spare bedrooms for storage and BT open reach for lending us their offices to build them.

This year we are supporting:

The Haven Refuge

Jericho House Refuge

Mencap

Olivia’s Closet

Big Venture centre

7 local Wolverhampton schools (10 or more families each to support)

Nominated families within the local Community

Penn Hospital

We then deliver the hampers out.

This is the link to the group’s Facebook group:

Caroline Lockley