A big thank you from Santa Stork

For families already struggling to afford the basics, Christmas can be tough and many local families faced the prospect of telling their little ones that Santa may not visit this year.

Thanks to the incredible response to our Santa Stork Christmas Appeal, we raised enough to fund 600 Christmas presents for children and families across Elmbridge who are having a particularly hard time.

The Santa Stork Christmas Appeal, run in conjunction with Surrey-based baby bank Stripey Stork, raised a fantastic £3,500, which our trustees agreed to match £1 for £1. The £7,000 total was used to ensure every Elmbridge child or family referred to Stripey Stork, received a Christmas gift.

Christmas delivered

Stripey Stork has been running its highly successful Santa Stork campaign for 8 years. Joining forces with local toy retailer, Toy Barnhause, they produce a catalogue of 76 popular gifts for children aged 0-18 years. Working closely with local organisations, they give parents and carers the opportunity to select gifts from the catalogue that reflect each child’s personality and interests. This is so important as, for many children, this will be the only gift they receive.

The wonderful team of volunteer Elves work tirelessly throughout November and December to assemble the gift packs which include stocking fillers, wrapping paper, Sellotape and a gift tag so that parents and carers can wrap the gifts themselves. Once the gift packs are ready, teams of sleigh drivers from Elmbridge referral partners visit Santa Stork HQ to collect them and deliver to their local families.

We would like to say a huge thank you to our local community for coming together to make this happen…to our corporate partners and everyone in our community who supported our Christmas Appeal and to Stripey Stork and their Elves for ensuring that every child referred to them experienced a little bit of Christmas magic.