With all the donations now collected and counted, it's clear that we had a record-breaking Christmas - thanks in large part to the support provided by the friends of the club. Overall takings over the Christmas period were £5168 - an increase of 60% on the total for the Christmas period in 2013.
The Santa programme began at the Woodside Centre on 29th November and concluded outside Morrisons store at Lawley at 3pm on Christmas Eve. Between those two dates the schedule shows a total of 60 hours of collecting activity with the sleigh, including weekend daytime collections at the major Telford supermarkets and evening collections around the streets. Each of these sessions required a support team of "Santa's little helpers" of course, so the total effort required for the programme amounted to well over 400 person hours and around one third of that effort came from family and friends of the club.
The major task of scheduling all this activity and then populating the schedule with "volunteers" fell, as usual, to Past President June Softley and, again as usual, she did it brilliantly - and almost painlessly!
The major task of scheduling all this activity and then populating the schedule with "volunteers" fell, as usual, to Past President June Softley and, again as usual, she did it brilliantly - and almost painlessly!
The club's community support activity during the year relies heavily on the funds raised over the Christmas period and every penny of the £5168 raised this year will go to worthy causes and the extra money raised will make a substantial difference to the number of causes we will be able to support in the coming year.
Running alongside the Santa sleigh campaign as usual, and also requiring very significant effort on the part of members and friends, was our traditional programme of collecting food items and distributing this in hampers to families in need. Much of this food was gathered by door to door collections following a leaflet drop to around 3000 houses, but we also received significant donations of food items from shoppers during our Santa sleigh visits to the supermarkets. This year the total collected amounted to approximately 2.5 tonnes and we were able to distribute 130 hampers in the week before Christmas.
Running alongside the Santa sleigh campaign as usual, and also requiring very significant effort on the part of members and friends, was our traditional programme of collecting food items and distributing this in hampers to families in need. Much of this food was gathered by door to door collections following a leaflet drop to around 3000 houses, but we also received significant donations of food items from shoppers during our Santa sleigh visits to the supermarkets. This year the total collected amounted to approximately 2.5 tonnes and we were able to distribute 130 hampers in the week before Christmas.
Commenting on the this year's results, club President Colin Thompson said
"This is a terrific achievement which says much for the generosity of people in our area and for the trust which they have in our club. It also underlines the importance of having a strong body of friends and supporters. It is absolutely clear that we could not undertake programmes as extensive as these without the assistance of Friends of the club and our own family members. And this year we also had the support of Telford police cadets which was a real bonus."
"This is a terrific achievement which says much for the generosity of people in our area and for the trust which they have in our club. It also underlines the importance of having a strong body of friends and supporters. It is absolutely clear that we could not undertake programmes as extensive as these without the assistance of Friends of the club and our own family members. And this year we also had the support of Telford police cadets which was a real bonus."
"Ironbridge Lions is committed to providing, through our micro-volunteering approach, opportunities for people to make a community contribution in a way that fits with their family and work commitments. Over the coming year we will be aiming to build our body of friends so that next Christmas we may have yet another record result."
Further information on membership of the club can be found here and on other support opportunities here.
Further information on membership of the club can be found here and on other support opportunities here.
