Putting the magic back into Christmas
Christmas can be magical for children and their families with time spent together decorating the tree, eating delicious food, and writing your Christmas list for Santa. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case as many children across the UK will wake up on Christmas day to a cold house with no toys under the tree, no treats, no Christmas dinner and sometimes no dinner at all. That’s why Scottish Friendly are proud charity partners with Action for Children.
We wanted to make a difference and what better way to do that than to help raise money to ensure as many children as possible across Scotland had something to wake up to on Christmas morning.
Throughout the month of December at Scottish Friendly, we organised a busy calendar of festivities to raise awareness of and money for Action for Children. Our fundraising activities brought some festive Christmas cheer to our office both virtually and in person.
On the 1st of December our office Christmas tree was put up in reception and was named the ‘Christmas gifting tree’. Colleagues had the opportunity to donate food and place it under the tree. On the 21st of December all collections were packaged into individual hampers and delivered to the Action for Children service in Easterhouse for delivery to vulnerable families across Scotland. These food donations are so important as they could help to feed a family across Scotland over Christmas when so many people are struggling, and schools are closed with free lunches and breakfast clubs not being an option for children.
Other events and activities organised throughout December included Christmas cards being purchased directly from Action for Children where all proceeds will go towards the charity and placed on each floor of the office encouraging colleagues to write a Christmas card to a fellow colleague.
The ‘Great Scottish Friendly Bake off’ was our next event. Nothing beats a traditional home-bake sale and we thought this would be a great way to raise money within our office. For colleagues who fancied themselves as the next Mary Berry of Scottish Friendly, we asked them to get their pinny on and produce the goods.
So, with all of this in mind, our aim was to put a little magic back into Christmas for the many children and their families who need it most, during the festive season.