Give a Gift Campaign

St Albans Community Association and The Dorothy Parkes Centre launched their Christmas Give a Gift Appeal in partnership with SCIPS and Sandwell Council and are working to help make Christmas a special time of year for those who may be struggling after a difficult year.

Christmas should be a magical time of year, a time shared with loved ones, family, and friends, exchanging gifts and making memories. However, for some people in Sandwell it will be spent alone, or in care, or without any presents under the tree, and there will be no Christmas dinner. St Albans Community Association and Dorothy Parkes Centre, two Smethwick based charities who between them provide quality, holistic, advice, guidance, support, and a place of welcome and opportunity, at grass roots level, on a day-to-day basis, are working together to help make a difference this Christmas.

Tonia Flannagan, Chief Executive Officer at St Albans Community Association said:

“We had a tremendous response to this campaign two years ago and we want to make it even better this year. In our previous appeal we had over 300 gifts donated which were distributed to those children who spent Christmas in hospital and to older people who do not have any family or receive gifts. We were amazed at the generosity of local people, and we hope the community works together to make this year another success”.

Robert Bruce, Chief Executive Officer at Dorothy Parkes Centre said:

“Christmas is the season of goodwill and given all of the challenges in the country now with COVID, the increase in cost of living, and reduction of benefits, this ‘magical’ time of year could be extremely difficult for many people. We hope that our appeal can ensure that we put smiles on many people’s faces this Christmas.”

The appeal was a great success with an overwhelming response to the campaign.  Once the gift were all donated, we then had rally around our volunteers to wrap and distribute the gifts.