Record-breaking Christmas Project for Wood Street Mission
02 Jan 2013
Jan O'Connor, Manager of Wood Street Mission, writes to thank everyone at the University who has contributed to this year's Christmas Project.
We are writing to thank you for your generous donations of toys, food and financial donations towards this year’s Christmas Project. Once again, this really was a bumper collection from The University of Manchester and the amount of work involved by those organising the donations and collections is greatly appreciated. Please pass on our thanks to everyone who was involved and who made donations to the 2012 appeal.
This year, we have been able to provide 4,000 local children with toys and gifts (the largest number we have ever helped - last year's total was 3,360). Each parcel also includes at least one book to read as well: this is part of our ongoing commitment to encourage children to engage in reading. We have also given each family a food hamper to help them through the Christmas period. The hampers are packed with a variety of items to help the families provide a range of nutritional meals for the whole family throughout the extended Christmas holidays. We have over 1,700 local families referred to us for help this Christmas. We are now distributing the parcels to the families in plenty of time for Christmas.
We continue to support families throughout the year with clothing parcels, baby equipment, bedding and Easter Eggs, as well as offering a school uniform package at the beginning of the school year. In these difficult economic times, more and more families are struggling to provide basic items for their children and they are faced with increasing demands on our services with diminishing levels of donations. This is why we are grateful for the support we receive all year from the members of staff at The University of Manchester.
The families really do appreciate the support they receive. It is on their behalf that we thank you for your generosity and continued support.
Jan O’Connor
Manager
Wood Street Mission
More information:
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PS: Thank you from Muriel Shingler and Rose Underwood
Our thanks also go to the Post Room and Central Stores, North Campus, for the help and support they gave us to ensure that all the donations were delivered to Wood Street Mission in time for the distribution to take place on 3 December. We would also like to thank the Internal Communications Team for publishing articles about the work of Wood Street Mission.