Everyone Deserves a Christmas 2020: A Look Back
Can you believe a whole year has gone by already? It’s almost Christmas again! And we’re really excited for another fun and fabulous festive season, but to make it truly the most wonderful time of the year we’re bringing back Everyone Deserves a Christmas.
If you’re not sure what we’re talking about then here’s a quick recap on all the good that happened last year.
First, what is it?
Everyone Deserves a Christmas is an initiative that involves us at Mecca Bingo and you spreading the joy by providing food hampers for families, who through no fault of their own, are likely to be struggling and could do with a little help.
These hampers contain £50 worth of food items and gifts donated by our team, Mecca customers and local businesses. These will then be distributed to the most vulnerable in the area, identified by the local council, before Christmas.
Last year’s success
In 2020, Mecca Swansea were the first to take part in the charitable initiative, which was organised by the local MP Carolyn Harris and sponsored by South Wales Evening Post and Coop. It was not soon after that that more of our clubs got involved in Everyone Deserves a Christmas. At the end, we had over 50 pieces of PR coverage and a whopping 52 charity links, which raised £185,000 in money and hampers (worth £50 each)!
Due to Covid, we had to rely mostly on JustGiving donations, rather than in-club fundraising and food donations, but that didn’t stop the generosity of everyone involved. Here are a few heart-warming stories of how some amazing people helped raised money and donations:
- Kim Jones, the General Manager, and Natalie Holland from our Swansea club got all the available clubs on board. After mobilising them, the marketing team amplified the initiative and then got the digital team involved who helped with fundraising and procurement, as well as the F&B team who secured donations from a few suppliers.
- Bahar in Dagenham made a plea to all her friends, colleagues and family for any donations, and managed to get nearly £1,000 worth of products donated, including essential toiletry items.
- Billie and her team in York did a local business sweep, managing to gain 7 sponsorships in just one day in her area!
- Kelly Knight in Dagenham sold her own items from home and managed to raise £300 to donate.
- Paul McGlinchy and his team up in Scotland not only raised £1,000 on JustGiving, but they also completed nearly 50 hampers! They achieved this by doing a drive-by donation for the hampers.
- Knotty Ash worked with the local MP, Ian Byrne, to collect donations and raise cash to make the hampers, and in total raised £500 in donations and cash to make 40 hampers.
What we’re doing in 2021
As Mecca Swansea blazed the trail last year, they will be front and centre for this incredible initiative in 2021. Each of our clubs will then set themselves up as a hub, asking players and the local community to donate goods to fill the hampers.
If you would like to get involved this Christmas, you can drop off food items at your nearest Mecca Bingo club. Help us create 5,000 hampers for local families that need a helping hand this festive season! Alternatively, if you’d like to donate, here’s our link to our Just Giving page of which the proceeds are going to Carers Trust.
If ur giving hampers to most needy then please consider David and Johan reid.no matter how hard they try they have been left without money for ages.no food hardly and gas is off at min.they try their very best and I think it would be lovely to get a hamper from Mecca to show that people do care .