The kindness and generosity of our community never ceases to amaze me, and today's gesture has moved us to tears!

The Wiverton-in the -Vale parish started an appeal:

We have been thinking about all the campaigning and awareness work that has been happening on the issue of child poverty and hunger in the UK. In  light of this campaign and with Xmas looming (which is a hard time for many and especially challenging this year with Covid), we contacted one of our local Headteachers  to see whether we had a  lot of children in our area that would need and depend on the free school meals during holidays to ensure that they had sufficient food when not in schools. We were amazed when the Head Teacher advised us that yes, in our area around 10% of our local children would currently fall into this category.  With Covid this year more children and families fall into this category with families having experienced job losses, wage cuts or from being furloughed on reduced wages for extended periods so it is harder for these families than ever.

What’s great is that our Local Council have committed to providing meal vouchers or meals for these children over the Xmas holidays, but we still think we could do more to help ease this period for those children and their families and to make Christmas a more special affair.

So we would like to reach out to our Parishioners for some help for these families… 

The response to the appeal has been incredible. So much so that we have been able to make up hampers, not only for our own families, but also to send to Cropwell Bishop. We also put aside the non-perishable items and have sent them to The Children's Centre in Bingham where they are putting together food parcels for families too.

This year has been so challenging and difficult for us all. There have been times where we have been in the position of 'helper' and other times the position of 'helped'. We hope that these hampers are well received, in the manner that they were intended. As one gift tag said, 'I hope it all helps. No child or family should feel ashamed to receive these gifts.'