A special gift this Christmas
When called upon the people in Newcastle & South Tyneside can really pull together. The overall impact this has had on the community has been incredible.
29/12/2020
When called upon the people in Newcastle & South Tyneside can really pull together. The overall impact this has had on the community has been incredible.
This year has been extremely difficult for everyone; the pandemic has had severe knock-on effects on mental health and wellbeing. Working in the home care industry we come across a lot of elderly people who are isolated from the community. Sometimes our Care Assistants are the only people our customers see.
Christmas is a time for giving and at Bluebird Care Newcastle & South Tyneside we wanted no one to go without a gift this year. By engaging with our local communities and through your kind donations, we wanted to help older people who might not otherwise receive a gift at Christmas time. We wanted to finish 2020 on a high, with no one suffering from loneliness.
#GiveAGift2020
Bluebird Care Newcastle and South Tyneside coordinated a Christmas gifting campaign called #GiveAGift2020. The campaign was designed to help combat loneliness, especially amongst older people, in the lead up to Christmas.
We are happy to have been able to facilitate a project like this. Working in Home Care we often come across many elderly people who have little to no family or friends. This makes a time like Christmas even harder than usual. To all of the people who donated, whether it be to our GoFunding page so we were able to go buy gifts or if it was a pre-made gift, we thank you. As this would not have been possible without your kindness and generosity. We have all worked together to create a lot of smiles this Christmas, this is something we can be proud of together. Thank you.
David Haswell, Director
We managed to raise £500 in cash donations through our go funding campaign. Along with the monetary donations, we were collected 110 gifts pre made gifts from our friends at J n K Dance and Cafe at the Corner. These consisted of gift bags with various items in like socks, mugs, chocolates toiletries and crosswords/puzzles.
Who we worked with
We worked 7 organisations in the community who either help us raise funds for gifts, collected pre-made gifts or helped us to reach those who needed it most.
Happy at Home charity in South Tyneside – support the elderly and lonely in South Tyneside by offering weekly visits to lonely isolated people, they go round have a chat, listen to music, share a past time or just reminisce. We were able to donate 20 gifts which would be distributed throughout South Tyneside to those that need it most.
The Charles Young Centre in South Shields – is open to the elderly community offering a wide range of social and recreational of activities and facilities for them to use. At Christmas time they cook and serve up to 100 Christmas dinners in the run up to Christmas day to the elderly. We will be working with them to provider 100 gifts and 100 Christmas crackers to go with the meals.
Reenage charity in Newcastle - provide social activities for older people at a time in their lives when their social circles are diminishing. We were able to provide their network of volunteers with 10 gifts to distribute throughout Newcastle to support their most lonely and isolated people this Christmas.
Hospitality and Hope - is a local charity in South Tyneside who worst grassroots in South Shields. They support homeless and vulnerable people in the area. We were able to provide Hospitality and Hope with 20 gifts for their elderly and venerable users as well as a miscellaneous box full of other supplies for their foodbank.
Café at the Corner South Shields – ran a shoe box type appeal with their customers who filled boxes with Christmas gifts and a Christmas card, written by a child. In total they donated over 30 gifts to our campaign.
J n K School of Dance in South Shields – members donated 80 Christmas gifts to the campaign for us to distribute to the elderly in the community. These gifts specifically went to the Charles Young centre because of a personal connection with the dance school owner.
The gifts
The gifts came from the people in our community, for the people in community. Its a great feeling seeing so many people looking out for one another.
From everyones kind donations and generosity we were able to collect:
- 100 pre-made gifts
- 84 x Christmas crackers
- 45 gifts made up from cash donations
- 6 x Large print puzzles
- 2 x Pack of ballpoint pens
- 4 x Faux leather 2021 diary
- 5 x Retro playing cards
- 12 x Toy matchbox puzzles
- 10 x Hot water bottle
- 10 x pairs of socks
- 10 x fluffy blankets
- 5 x Jigsaw puzzles
- 5 x Royal shortbread
- 10 x Hand cream
- 10 x Lynx shower gel
- 40 x Boxes of chocolates
Gifts under a Christmss tree
The impact
When called upon the people in Newcastle & South Tyneside can really pull together. The overall impact this has had on the community has been incredible. We have managed to help some great charities and their service users as well as reaching so many elderly people that really needed it this Christmas.
From our #GiveAGiftCampaign2020 we were able to reach 145 elderly people across Newcastle & South Tyneside with a Christmas gift this Christmas, aswell as providing 84 crackers to go with Christmas meals in the run up to Christmas.
In total 229 gifts were giving out to individuals of the elderly community. Meaning 229 more smiles were made this Christmas.
Gift on someones door step
After a difficult 2020 for all, at least there has been a small light at the end of the tunnel and if we were able to combat loneliness even slightly this year, we'll take that as a win.
We'd just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who donated to our #GiveAGift2020 campaign, because without you this would not have been possible.
