To make this suggestion for christmas charity giving for children

[BloominNora]

Just been reading the Operation Christmas Child threads, plus also thinking about whether to get our PTFA involved in some kind of Christmas charity giving this year.

This may have already been suggested on the OCC thread, but it is getting quite long so I wanted to make it more explicit.

For those of you who want to ask you schools to try a different charity or would like to give yourself but not via OCC, can I suggest that you donate toys to your local women's refuge or contact your local authority to find out how to donate toys to the homeless service for those children who are living in hostels or B&B's with their parents this year and who will not get anything otherwise.

You would be helping to bring joy to some very vulnerable children with no agenda or evangelical preaching.

YANBU

There are lots of better ways to give than OCC. Your suggestions are all good. Also:

Kids Company (helps vulnerable children in the UK)

Mary's Meals - provides food for children at schools in Africa, and also runs the Backpack Project

Plan, which helps children in poverty all over the world.

The Red Cross which works in the UK and overseas, including in current crisis zones like the Philippines and Syria.

Or if people have already packed up a shoebox but are having second thoughts about Operation Christmas Child, and can't find a local home for it, they could divert it to the Rotary Club shoebox appeal, which is not evangelical.

Thanks exexpat!

I was thinking about the homeless kids because the homeless service at the Local Authority I work for always puts out a plea for toys to staff.

Given that over 6000 people work for the authority, 2000 in the head office, and they are collecting for around 250 children from babies up to teens, I always find it really heart breaking to see how few donations they actually get, yet things like OCC seem to get people donating in the 1000's.

These children, and the ones in refuges have lost their homes, sometimes their friends if they have had to move areas and schools. These will be children attending your DC's school - they may even be their friends.

A lot of people spend hundreds of pounds on their own kids or family - divert a fiver or tenner from that and bring some joy to a local child this Christmas.

Unfortunately local authorities and women's refuges don't have a huge marketing budget, unlike campaigns like Operation Christmas Child...

It might be worth starting a few more threads like this the closer we get to Christmas, just to remind people.

It doesn't seem to be getting much attention here either

Maybe it needs a more eye- catching title - perhaps I should have put MIL problems or parent and child parking spaces in the title - that would have had people coming to the thread in droves