'Arms Wide Open' Hampers 2011 Summary

As part of the King's Church 'Arms Wide Open' Christmas theme I co-ordinated the collection of Hampers and then the distribution to families in need. This is a summary of what happened.  The list of food items for the Hampers included about 15 essential items and 5 Christmas treats and we asked for items to be good quality.  Thanks to Big Yellow Storage Company for donating 150 boxes to be used for putting the food items in.  Thanks to all the volunteers who spent hours sorting and getting the boxes ready to be sent out.

The response from the people of King's Church was remarkable with over 250 hampers being collected, we were preparing for around 100!  The collection Sundays were an amazing picture of a community working together to benefit others.  Whilst the majority were from individuals, families and community groups within King’s Church, there were many schools and companies who also got involved in providing Hampers.  Here is one example,

“The Hampers below are provided by my team at LOCOG Accreditation and Uniforms department. They were so excited to know the great work that Kings is doing. I was overwhelmed by the response.”

The task was then arranging where to distribute all these hampers.  Here is the list of organisations who helped us to make the deliveries to the families in need.  I've added a few comments from the people who handed them out.

Lewisham Family Support and Intervention Service – 150 boxes

“Just wanted to say thanks again for the hampers. I had the privilege of giving out 8 and they were certainly very well received by people struggling and would have made a big difference to their Christmas. I've heard lots of stories of kids being excited to find the chocs!” Children’s Social worker

“Just a little note to let you know that social workers are all very busy delivering the hampers to our very grateful families. We were able to give some Hampers to our colleagues in other services such as Children with disabilities service, Meliot Road family centre and to our no recourse families primarily based in our Referral and Assessment service. So I can assure you the children and families that will benefit from the Hampers cover a whole spectrum of 'children in need' across the borough.” Manager of the team

Honor Oak Family Support team – 10 boxes

“I wanted to let you know how appreciative my work colleagues were about the quality of the food boxes; it gave me lots of opportunity to talk about the project and the church! If we are doing it again health visitors could provide a very extensive list of needy families for you.” Children’s Family support team worker

Lewisham Refugee Network – 30 boxes

"Thanks once again for the hampers you delivered before Christmas. The clients who received them were thrilled – it really made a difference to them."

The Bridge school of English – 6 boxes
Voluntary Care centre – 30 boxes
Jericho Road Project and those known to King’s Church – 20 boxes

I will leave the final comment to a member of King’s who emailed the following comment

“I was so glad that we decided to do this in this way. It made me feel proud to be part of something that is not about shinning glory on ourselves and bigging ourselves up as kind and generous but that truly wants to help those in need regardless of the status or thanks that we receive.”

Brilliant! Well done and Thank you!