Christmas giving with New Hope Homelessness Charity in Watford

One of our Year 4 students, Callum, has worked with his parents over the last few years to create Christmas gift boxes for New Hope Homeless Shelter. This year, he suggested that other students might want to take part, which we thought was a great idea.

We are partnering with New Hope to provide Christmas gift bags for the 26 children in the families they support, ranging from 8 months to 15 years, and hope that lots of our students and families will take part! (Please note, the charity has requested gift bags, rather than boxes, to avoid damage in transit).

After half term, there will be a Christmas tree in reception with gift tags on it for each of the 26 children with their gender and age and some suggestions about what you might want to include in the gift bag. There are also many adults being supported by New Hope, so people can also create gift bags for them too, if we have more people wanting to take part. Gift bags can be done independently or in groups.

As an alternative option, there is an Amazon wish list for New Hope, which has some of the items for adults, as well as some specific gifts for the children. Some of these are larger/more expensive, so you can always club together in a group to purchase one of these. If purchasing from the wish list please put Little Green as part of the donor reference so they know it’s from us. The link for the wish list will be going live next week, and we will send the details then. 

Things to include for children:

• Books, toys, stationery, gel pens, notebooks, crafts, activities, colouring pencils, pretty tights, toiletries, hat/gloves, clothes (size up), selection box/bag of sweets

Things to include for adults:

• Toiletry sets, box of chocolates, tin of biscuits, family board games, hats, gloves, photo frames, hot water bottle, Christmas decorations

*Please ensure no toiletries or edible items contain alcohol

New Hope has also requested that the gifts inside the bags are left unwrapped, so that it is possible to see what is being given to the different children and families. If you would like to make them look festive, then tissue paper, glitter, a Christmas message etc. would be lovely (also, please remember only to use first names if signing the message, for GDPR purposes.) 

We are asking that all gift bags be brought to school by Friday 8th December. We will also be asking some students to help bring the donations to New Hope with us.

Celebrating World Kindness Day on 13th November

To celebrate World Kindness Day, and support people in our community, we are also collecting advent calendars for Watford Foodbank ahead of Christmas. If you would like to donate one, please bring this to school by Tuesday 21 November and leave this in the box in reception.