The Right Christmas Appeal

In 2007 we decided we’d had enough of Christmas. Christmas as we knew it, anyway. Full of stress and consumption and desperately short on peace and charity.

 

We decided to do two things – slow down a bit and choose to opt-out of a few things we really don’t need to do, creating some space and saving some cash, and then give away some of that cash to a community who really need a present at Christmastime.

 

People have simplified the way they celebrate Christmas, and others have put on low-key but fun fundraising events to support our efforts. To date, we’ve raised over £30,000 to GIVE AWAY at Christmastime and we’re all agreed that our experience of Christmas is all the better for it.

We alternate between supporting home projects and overseas projects. In 2007 we supported the Gulshan Literacy Project working with street kids in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The next year it was the Aberdeen Cyrenians, who work with the homeless in our own city. In 2009 we supported New Life Homes Trust, who rescue abandon newborn babies in Kenya and look after them until they can be adopted, and in 2010 we split our funds between Aberdeen Street Pastors and Monty’s Maggies Appeal, who are aiming to build a Maggies Cancer Care centre in Aberdeen.

 

2011 saw us purchase badly needed cesarean surgical kits for Nkhoma Hospital in Malawi where our mission partners David and Rebecca Morton are working. Since 2011 we’ve changed the focus a little so that we are concentrating on sharing time and talents and not just money, working on a three-year cycle.

 

In 2014 a total of £6739 was raised and split equally between our own Development Fund and ARCHIE’s “Give Me Ten” appeal.

 

Look out for ways you can get involved in what we’re doing, and help us celebrate a Right Christmas.