A massive Christmas thank you!

This year, our Christmas selection box appeal for vulnerable children was a great success! One week before our deadline we posted on social media that we were at 4000 selection boxes meaning we still had 823 left to collect and your response was amazing! In five days, communities, individual donators, schools, businesses and many more got together to meet the target. We were overwhelmed with the amount of support the charity was given so close to the deadline. We would love to mention everyone but we have been so blessed with support it’s impossible to mention everyone by name.

It is necessary to give a special mention to the teams at ENVA, SF Recruitment and Tilbury Douglas due to their amazing donations which accounted for 1563 selection boxes. ENVA kindly donated 652 selection boxes, SF Recruitment donated 526 boxes and Tilbury Douglas contributed 485. These are amazing contributions and we are so thankful to have your support.

Other volunteers from many other companies came to volunteer their time to help us. They were involved with cutting and counting wrapping paper, boxing the wrapped chocolates and of course wrapping! Teacher Active and The Progeny group were two companies who came with Santa’s Elves to help the process. We hope the volunteers who came enjoyed their time with us as much as we did. On top of this, we had a constant flow of messages from the community wanting to come and wrap, this truly is amazing and we are so grateful for this additional support.

We went to the University of Nottingham to do a wrapping event with their Cheerleading society who managed to wrap over 2000 selection boxes in an hour (wow) a week before distribution. This was a fabulous event and something we look forward to continuing with the University in even more years to come. Well done for your very speedy wrapping, thank you!

We also had many volunteers picking up tool kits to pack the selection boxes themselves. This was a massive help to this process and we thank each and every person who not only donated the selection boxes but also wrapped them as well.

Along with physical donations we also received many financial donations which enabled us to cover the cost of wrapping paper, the pre-made Christmas cards and collect 500 selection boxes!! Our total financial donations was £1296.88, this is an outstanding contribution! Thank you to everyone who helped towards this amazing number. With this money we went to Toton Tesco’s where we received very generous help from Heather and Neil to collect 500 selection boxes from the donations received. Another massive shout out to Derby Bed Centre, the Progeny Group and NatWest for their insane contributions which helped us massively, thank you! Without this generosity we would not have met our target. These donations made the final weeks of preparation possible and helped us meet our 4823 target. Every donation went towards getting a vulnerable child a Christmas present and ultimately putting a smile on their face in a potentially difficult time of year. Thank you to everyone who donated for making this achievable!

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There were various ways that people raised money or awareness for this appeal. St Andrews Primary did a Dunelm inspired Christmas tree gift request. They wrote selection boxes on some of their tree tags and then pupils and their families donated these. Another fun way of donating was shown by Xylem with their lovely photos of their team wrap day where Santa paid them a visit! Together they donated 487 wrapped selection boxes! Walgreen Boots Alliance also got together for a team wrapping day, bringing to the office 142 gifts! There are so many more wrapping days that happened towards this cause and all the photos are attached! We hope that you enjoyed your wrap day as much as we enjoyed ours here in the office. You didn’t leave much for us to wrap though!!

Other methods of collecting donations consisted of a bit of DIY. The Nottingham Building society and Kontoor brands created a donation box for people to give to this appeal. Collectively they donate 108 selection boxes. This is wicked and we are so thrilled that you donated towards this appeal for another year. Thank you!

Also, to all the anonymous donators out there, we owe you a massive thank you as we haven’t been able to yet! Everything donated is so massively appreciated and is going towards such an amazing cause. Every single donation; whether this is a donation of money, the chocolates themselves or precious time, we appreciate you all so so much and this would not have gone ahead without your support.

Coming into this new role at Operation Orphan, I had no idea what to expect especially with such a large appeal to manage, but I am overwhelmed with the amount of support you have each given towards ensuring your community feels included and cared for. This is very special and something that everyone should be very proud of.

- Gwen x