On Monday the 9th of December Abbots Oak welcomed the disadvantaged and those without a home to enjoy a warm Christmas dinner with us in the manor and to be able to use the facilities provided. Thanks to our community, and their generosity the success was overwhelming.
As a team we knew we wanted to help a charitable cause this Christmas. With the overwhelming numbers of those alone at Christmas we knew that we wanted to give an opportunity for those less fortunate to get together and enjoy the winter festivities.
Hoping to receive a few basic donations of toiletries and winter clothes we approached our marketing team Unity, to help us with promotion of the event. A post was created reaching out to our social community asking for their support.
The post shared reached over 40,000 people and received 434 shares! We were inundated with well wishers and people wanting to donate items or volunteer on the day. We also received an overwhelming response from local businesses…
illy coffee kindly supplied us with coffee for the day and Total Produce provided us with fresh fruit and vegetables, Macro kindly donated food and produce, Unity generously paid for a coach hire for the day to ensure all of our guests could make it! And Pets at Home donated items for our furry friends!
Easy Squeegee our cleaning company even offered their service to us free of charge for after the event.
The generosity from the community was astounding, we received hundreds of donations of food, toiletries, clothes, sleeping bags and so much more!
With our troop of volunteers and staff we all worked together to sort through the donations and prepare them in “Donation Bags” (supplied by Morrisons) for their new deserving owners.
We had such an overwhelming response to donations that we were able to give truck loads of donations to homeless charities across Leicestershire.
At 11am our coach of guests arrived along with their supportive charities Action for the Homeless and Bridge Leicester.
The dinner was a huge success, there were full bellies, laughs, songs, and tears of happiness shared by everyone throughout the day.
Thank you to everyone who helped contribute to the day, you definitely added some magic to someones Christmas.
