As the end of 2022 drew ever closer, November was another fantastic month for us with a triple whammy of fundraising – and all rather festive to raise funds for our charity supporting our mission of helping children in hospital, health and disability causes that we are passionate about.
Over £22,000 was raised overall last year thanks to the kindness and generosity of our community.
Now, we are looking back at some of the highlights of our milestone fifteenth anniversary year.
As we hurtled towards the end of the year, November saw lots going on!
We held our very first social networking evening at our headquarters, our registered business address in Abingdon at The Lambourn – and what a lovely networking event it was.
Many local business people came together for an hour or two, mingling, catching up over glasses of fizz and nibbles, and learnt more about our charity meeting Andy, and in attending for free they were all encouraged to bring along a donation of a new toy for our Sleigh2Give 8 Appeal.
The networking evening was a great success, and it launched our 8th Sleigh2Give campaign wonderfully with almost 80 gifts from the night alone, including generous donations from Thompson & Terry Recruitment, Mike Foster The Entrepreneurs Mentor and Signs Express Oxford amongst just some of the toys received from the wonderful business folk who came along.
The evening was supported and host by Amanda Winfield (Mantle Space) and was sponsored by Imran Lokhon – People & Property and Ben Thompson of Thompson & Terry Recruitment.
We plan to host another networking evening in support of the Sleigh2Give Appeal later this year, and hopefully a Summer social, too.
We also ran a stall to raise funds and awareness at the Christmas Market held by the Courtyard by Marriott Oxford South, and we raised over £180 profit, and it was a lovely start to the festive season, where there was many stalls, Twistopher the balloon man, and also a live nativity farm and the hotel ran afternoon tea with GBBO 2015 finalist Christine Wallace. Andy alongside Santa was asked to do the big switch on of the Christmas tree.
And, at the end of the month we held our best ever Christmas Party at The Barn in Didcot with around 120 in attendance, and raising £551. It was a brilliantly fun festive family event, with fantastic party games played, even Didcot councillor and former Mayor of Didcot, Mocky Khan, joined in by being dressed as a Snowman in the Snowman game, and came runner-up. Twistopher was on hand for balloon magic, Pixxelboxx brought an extra special occasion to life with a selfie pod to make for magical memories for all guests, and Santa dropped in to. And, as always our friends at Utopia Disco provided the most amazing disco, getting everyone into the groove.
It was also the month that saw us with our traditional collection in Tesco Didcot, our 4-day in-store appeal for our Sleigh2Give drive. Andy, Maggie, Wendy and other volunteers were on hand armed with smiles and warmth galore and the sleigh to collect hundreds of gifts from kind-hearted shoppers and store staff, in a record and best-ever 4-day collection. Every day the sleigh was brimming full, and over £540 was donated in cash towards helping us purchase items on our Sleigh2Give wish list, for our Christmas beneficiaries. It truly was the most magnificent collection ever and our thanks go to Didcot Community Champions Becci and Elaine at the store for inviting and allowing us in store for four consecutive days, and also to the store for also adding to our collection with the donation of toys too, especially with their own toy appeal for Home-Start Didcot, who is one of our annual Sleigh2Give recipients.
Thank you to all of our wonderful supporters and to all of our community who get behind our charity and helping us in changing, transforming and saving lives across Oxfordshire and beyond.
It is only thanks to the incredible support we receive that we are able to do what we do in making an enormous difference and impact on the lives of others.