Published on: Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Just prior to the Christmas break, pupils from our King's Community Action Project (KCAP) were busy embodying the spirit of Christmas and filled shoeboxes with essentials and treats, which were delivered to Arc Taunton at the end of the Michaelmas term. This initiative was made possible by our pupils’ care for and commitment to their local community, and generous donations from them and their families.
Arc Taunton have written back to King's with the following lovely message:
"I am writing to say a big thank you for supporting our Christmas Shoebox Campaign. We apologise that we haven’t got round to it sooner, but we had an incredibly busy month with so much support, and a lot of organising to do to make our client’s Christmas a happy one. As you may have seen in our recent newsletters and social media campaigns, we’ve also been busier than usual this year with a rise in people needing to use our services. Your kindness has meant that we could provide all 170 of our clients with shoeboxes, as well ensure our Outreach team had boxes for those, they knew were rough sleeping. We were even able to provide all our resident dogs with a box of goodies too!
We have been overwhelmed with support during the Christmas period and we’re so incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to our appeals. We’re thrilled you have chosen to support Arc and we can guarantee that your donation made such a difference to someone experiencing homelessness locally. To quote, ‘sometimes it can only take one act of kindness to change a person’s life’. It really is true!
We were pleased to be able to put on lots of celebrations, provide gifts, food hampers and more to help our clients enjoy the festive season, at what is a difficult time for them. I have included some photos for you to see how happy it made many of our residents and how gratefully they were received. We hope you had a peaceful and happy Christmas too, and we wish you all the best for 2024.
Our services run 365 days a year and so we are always in need of support to ensure we can provide the help that local people experiencing homelessness need. If you are looking for a charity to support throughout the year, or could consider raising funds for us at any point throughout 2024, we'd be incredibly grateful."