350 young people in Lewisham were blown away to receive generous Christmas gift bag including toiletries, chocolate, gift cards, card games, basketballs, bluetooth speakers and more!
We launched our second Bank of Things Christmas Appeal towards the end of 2023 and we have been overwhelmed and heartened by the generosity and support received from our wonderful local community.
The Bank of Things is a year-round project run by Lewisham Local, providing essential items to economically disadvantaged young people. The Bank offers a free, accessible and dignified space for young people to access vital supplies for their health, hygiene, education or leisure.
We also run seasonal campaigns to provide further support at times of highest need – and the festive season is one of the most important periods for supporting young people experiencing disadvantage.
Drawing on lessons from last year we knew we needed to get cracking early, so we started approaching people in September, which admittedly did feel a little too soon to be mentioning the C word (Christmas!).
However, we persevered, and we made some lovely new friends. We worked with the incredible team at Mummy’s Gin Fund, a south London based online community offering support to parents with aims to combat loneliness and isolation. They approached us because they were looking for a Christmas campaign to support, and having older young people at home themselves, they totally understood how teenagers can so easily get overlooked by the Christmas donations schemes.
They introduced us to Wonderland Books, who were amazing. They arranged to have all the books that were bought by the MGF gang matched and in total we received nearly 90 books. Helen from Wonderland Books also, very thoughtfully offered to make sure some of the donated booked were dyslexia-friendly, and she sent us several copies of graphic novel versions of the GCSE set texts (Inspector Calls, MacBeth and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) which was so helpful.
Through MGF we developed an online Wishlist, check out our Linktree to see how we have adopted this approach for donations going forward. We received hundreds of generous donations both in terms of gifts and funds, and we really couldn’t have offered such a diversity of gifts without their support, including hoodies, Bluetooth speakers, basketballs, selfie lights and too many more to mention.
Through Lewisham Housing we were introduced to Andy and Dawn at MCN Print Media who were brilliant in helping us to source, finance and deliver all the toiletries we offered in the bags including deodorant, facewash, bodywash, pads, toothpaste, toothbrushes and lip balm.
We were fortunate to have the continued support of St Andrew’s Church Catford, and benefitted from the proceeds of the sale of some beautiful handmade glass Christmas decorations made by Rona Dixon, at their Christmas Bazaar. The church also gave us a hefty donation to boot.
NatWest Catford and Lewisham donned Christmas Jumpers and did some in-store fundraising and asked customers to donate items on our wish list, through their match funding scheme we received £1000 on top of it all. Regular Cleaning, who are always so supportive dropped off loads of gifts and then, as brave and noble as anyone could possibly expect, came in on the day AFTER(!) their Christmas party to help us wrap 200 pairs of socks, 49 Oodies and umpteen hats, gloves and scarves.
The Beauty Banks sent us two huge boxes stuffed with beautifully wrapped makeup and beauty items and we received so many lovely gifts from the public dropped into our donation bins at the front of the shop.
And lastly, we are eternally grateful to the wonderful Lee Charity of William Hatcliffe who funded the £10 gift vouchers for every single young person we were working with.
We were delighted to make contact with the Lewisham Leaving care team and through them we were able to reach 100 new young people facing their first Christmas living independently. Alongside Youth First, Young Lewisham project, Young Women’s Hub. St Andrew’s Youth Club Brockley, Rohoboth Community Outreach, Imago and Bank of Things direct we gave away 350 gift bags to young Lewisham residents facing a harsh Christmas.
If you would like to know more, or get involved in one of our upcoming appeals, (exams are coming up, so that’s our next focus, after that it’s back to school in the summer and before you know it Christmas will come around again all too soon) please do drop us a line info@bankofthingslewisham.org , or pop in and see us at Unit 19 on a Wednesday or Friday afternoon.
12.4kg of chocolate and sweets
40 cosy hoodies
100 socks, 20 hats, and 5 scarves
150 wrapped gifts from The Beauty Banks
350 toothbrushes, toothpastes, shower gels
350 £10 Love2Shop gift cards
and more than £1000 donated to support Bank of Things!