Chicken Memorials

[Popcorn]

OH and I were talking last night about our plans for Christmas Day.

 

We are away the week leading up to Christmas Day and we arrive home on Christmas Eve afternoon. We've made no plans for Christmas Day at all.

 

We've decided we'd like to go and help out at a homeless charity or on the streets on Christmas Day. Trouble is we have no idea how to go about it, or where to look, or who to contact to volunteer ourselves.

 

Anyone got any ideas?

[Cate in NZ]

In London the big charity is Crisis at Christmas. I'm not sure if they have local branches, but if not they're likely to have connections with local groups in your area. I'm sure they have a web-site, I'll try to check it out, but at work I only have limited internet access so might need to post again later. I did a day with them one year, ages ago, hard work, but very rewarding, but that was in the pre-children days, & I wasn't generous enough to give up my Christmas day, I think it was somewhere between Christmas and New Year.

I've helped Help the Aged locally more recently, again a few days before Christmas, driving old dears to their Christmas dinner provided by the charity. That was quite interesting

[Popcorn]

Oh thanks Kate. Any info would be gratefully received!

 

I like all of those ideas. I'll have a mooch about the web too. I have tried but I didn't really know what I looking for.

[Cate in NZ]

I've checked Crisis Gina, as I thought it's a London based charity, their web-site is www.crisis.org.uk which might be worth a look, but is obviously too far for you to travel, but if you contact them they may be able to suggest more local homeless charities for you. They did have 2 linkws on their site: www.do-it.org.uk & www.timebank.org.uk but I've not been able to follow those links, so I don't know how useful they are

[red]

Most communities have a local Poverty Action Group or similar - often these are linked to local churches so it's worth enquiring with them. I help raise money for our local PAG - they run soup kitchens and do a christmas meal and most homelessness/poverty charities are crying out for sleeping bags and mens clothing - jeans, fleeces, trackie bottoms etc - not so much of a call for frilly blouses etc. Good for you Gina

[El Jefe]

Hi Giina

 

As Red said - the local churches often organise soup runs, my local town has food available every day all organised by the local churches.

[Popcorn]

Thanks Guys, some good ideas there. The web-sites were all London based, but I did send off some emails to enquire. I'm going to visit the local 'Shelter' place and see about a visit to the Church in the city to hopefully get some idea of what goes on.

 

My old next door neighbour used to work for Shelter too, so I'm going to pop round to her. A good excuse to catch up too I think!

 

[buffie]

Good for you Gina!!

 

BBx

[The Dogmother]

That's just reminded me that there is a local character called Polly, who feeds the homeless outside the church every day at 6pm. She does this purely on donations and food handed out by food companies based locally.

 

Polly is a brillliant person and is there all weathers. I think that Rosie and I will go down there with some food during the festive season . I'm not churchy at all, but the sentiment is still there.

[Sheilaz]

The Salvation Army do a lot of work at this time of year too, but will depend how represented they are in your town. I would think they would welcome volunteers, whether Christian or not.