Christmas is a time of indulgence; we overeat, watch far too many films (I think we’re all still seething with Alan Rickman’s character in Love Actually) and we make those closest to us feel special with meaningful gifts.

Unfortunately, Christmas can also be a really hard time of year. For those living in poverty, Christmas can often feel overwhelmingly stressful and scary. As prices rise and letters are sent to Santa, many parents can feel helpless. This year Coronavirus has only put more strain on those who are most vulnerable within our society making it evermore difficult to enjoy the festive season.

What is Cash for Kids: Mission Christmas?

Cash for Kids is a fantastic charity that focuses upon helping the most vulnerable children within our society. Once a year they launch a campaign called Mission Christmas. This initiative aims to help children living in poverty in Preston experience the same Christmas magic as any other child. They ask for donations in order to help them get a visit from Father Christmas.

Here at Freightlink, we love to get involved with Cash for Kids: Mission Christmas. However, this year we have had to get a little more creative with our approach. Ordinarily our team will bring in toys that we later send to the charity. As the majority of our team have been working from home this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we realised that this was not going to be possible.

What We Did

As with everything this year, we knew we were going to have to approach this situation creatively in order to ensure that we were still able to donate to the charity. Due to the pandemic, we have made a lot of changes to the way in which we work, meaning that it wasn’t possible for everybody to make their usual in-person donations this year.

Rather than asking our team to bring presents into the office, we decided to set-up a digital collection pot to ask people to donate whatever money they could.

We also set up an internal Christmas tree-contest where members of our team decorated their Christmas trees at home in the hopes of winning a highly coveted prize! To enter, our team had to donate to the cause and take a picture of their fully-decorated tree in a bid to win the best-dressed contest!

When we had collected enough money, we went shopping and bought a multitude of toys and toiletries that we thought would make excellent Christmas presents for children whose parents are struggling this year. We then travelled to the local drop-off site and passed these along to the charity, who were all hard-at work getting everything all the donations organised and ready to be sent out.

How Much We Raised

Our team managed to raise a fantastic £225 for Cash for Kids: Mission Christmas!

Sadly this year has been harder than most and there are a lot of families who are missing out on the magic this year. We wanted to help spark a bit of joy in those less fortunate than us and have really enjoyed playing Santa this year!

If you would like to find out more about Cash For Kids: Mission Christmas or want to donate you can find out more information on their website.