In light of the Christmas season, Cardiau Cymraeg has decided to see through ‘5 Good Days’, which is something we made up to focus on one charity or some type of cause or awareness everyday for the next 5 days, to give back at this time of year. Look out for our Instagram posts and our blog posts to see what we’re up to! To kick off these 5 good days, today we dropped off a donation for the Operation Christmas Child charity. This very simple donation consisted of two shoeboxes packed to the brim with exciting Christmas presents for a girl and a boy.
We have been busy preparing two donations for Operation Christmas Child, and it was very straight forward – all you need for prep is to decide the gender you’d like to donate the shoe box to (girl or boy) and the age range (2-4, 5-9 or 10-14).
Then:
1. Find an old shoe box (or a few) and decorate it with colourful wrapping paper, ensuring you wrap the lid and box separately so that they can be opened and checked.
– wanting to stay as environmentally friendly as possible, we wrapped our boxes using brown paper and recyclable brown tape, and decorated them through doodling Christmas lights.
2. Go shopping (my favourite part) and pick out some things to fill the boxes with lovely gifts. It’s good to keep in mind whilst shopping, these children need school supplies, a “wow” item – which is a toy that they can love, hygiene items, and some other fun little things. The only downfall is all the things you buy need o fit inside a shoebox.
3. Pack it all up and print the label indicating the gender and age range.
Optional but recommended:
Post a photo of your shoebox on social media to encourage others to donate too!
4. Donate £5 per box to the charity to help with costs of distributing these gifts to children around the world. Whilst making this donation you will also be given a barcode that can be printed and placed inside the box. This barcode will then be scanned & in January you’ll receive an email telling you which country your box ended up in!
5. Drop it off! There are loads of drop off locations, where these boxes are collected, check the website here to find your nearest drop off location.
We had so much fun building up these boxes, and it doesn’t have to be extortionately expensive – we went to shops like Poundland and Home Bargains and managed to get so many lovely things for about £10 per box. As we were filling two boxes, we bought things like sponges and different stationary in packs to share between the two boxes, which made things very affordable. This year we decided to pick the age range 2-4 for both the girl and boy.
Here’s what we included in our shoeboxes (of course everything was fair between the boy & the girl):
– Soft cuddly teddy
– Colouring book, sticker book and doodle pad
– Stationary including: colouring pencils, crayons & a pencil case to hold them all (a little trick to save space & fit more in – take away the bulky packaging)
– Toothbrush, flannel, sponges, soap, a fun character wash thingy (the puffy shower things) and kids plasters
– water bottle
– hairbrush (for the girl)
– little car (for the boy)
– kids xylophone
… and of course a Cardiau Cymraeg Christmas Card with a little Christmas message!
There is a list of prohibited items, and some rules that need to be stuck to when buying for these boxes – more info here. This is such a fun way to give back this Christmas, which makes a difference to a child in a third world country, and we will definitely continue doing this every year. Unfortunately there isn’t much time left to donate these boxes, as the end of drop off week is Monday the 18th of November. However if you are inspired to donate, and you don’t have the time to pack a box tomorrow (and drop off Monday morning) there is a section on the website where you can pack a last minute box online choosing your items for £20 including £5 project donation, or send a prepacked box online for the same cost.
Look out on our social media and here on the blog to see what we’re getting up to tomorrow for Day 2 of 5 Days of Good!