Christmas shoebox 2022

On a scotching Saturday morning, 03 December, a team of dedicated JDC volunteers aka Santa’s elves, woke up bright and early to make their way to Cosmo City for the much-anticipated annual Christmas Shoebox outreach. After months of planning and preparations, the day had finally come. Behind the scenes, a week leading up to the event things were not looking up. There were no donations and it was simply not coming together. Considerations to cancel the event were entertained. You will remember that in 2021, we hosted the Christmas outreach in two areas. This year, after much debate, we resolved to only hosting it one area because we were worried we would not have enough donations. Expecting that we would only receive a handful of gifts, together with the little we could afford, we decided that we would have the event only in Cosmo City ext. 2. The reason we decided on this area is because they are a smaller group of beneficiaries and we had only had this outreach with them only once before, in 2021. Then, on the week of, just days before the event, the donations and gifts started trickling in, as the day approached more gifts came. There we were, on that hot Saturday morning, armed with hundreds of gifts, as we made our way to the New Ministries Church our chosen venue. When we arrived, we found scores of parents eagerly waiting in the blazing sun to get presents for their children. There were smiles and excitement in the air, the Christmas spirit was indeed present. We quickly set up, displaying all the beautifully wrapped gifts and arranging them according to various age group and genders. As soon as the set up was done, we got started with distribution, parents went through the different registration tables outside and the relevant data was collected. When all the admin was done, the visibly excited parents went inside the to collect gifts for their children. Word quickly got around in the community and more parents started showing up, the queue would not stop growing. Everyone that was present got a gift for each of their kids. When we started seeing some repeats, seeing parents lining up to collect twice, that’s when we decided to pack up and call it a day. We still had some gifts left over, which we distributed to a nursery school and a group of vulnerable and underprivileged kids in the Kya Sand Pipeline informal settlement. At the end of it all, we collected and distributed 939 gifts, that benefited459 boys and 480 girls who are all from underprivileged homes. The parents expressed their gratitude, many of them saying had it not been for us their children would not have received anything this Christmas. The day would have been just like any other ordinary day for their children. However, with these gifts, their kids will also wake up to something and feel special on Christmas. None of this would have been possible with you, our valued sponsors, supporters and contributors, thank you for helping us spread the Christmas Cheer.