The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Fifers urged to give a child the gift of Christmas
As the deadline approaches demand is vastly outstripping supply
Fifers are being urged to dig deep to help a group of Freuchie mums ensure there are no disappointed youngsters left empty handed this Christmas.
Katherine Hope, Hilary Haman, Sarah Brown and Charlotte Lever stepped in to establish the Gift of Christmas Appeal Fife following the demise of Fife’s Spirit of Christmas appeal which folded after a highly successful two years.
It has the same aim, to bring a bit of festive cheer to children who are in need and might otherwise receive very little this Christmas Day.
But with only days to go to the deadline, the group said the demand greatly exceeded supply.
The initiative, which has nearly 10,000 members on Facebook, has 43 drop-off points across Fife.
But gifts have to be handed in by Sunday – or before depending on the opening hours of drop-off points – so time is running out fast.
Katherine said: “Although we are seeing donations coming into the drop off points now, they have been coming in pretty slowly, although we are hoping that this will improve between now and when they close.
“Sadly, requests for gifts for children in need across Fife currently massively outweigh the number of donations which we have received so far.
“We have received over 2,500 requests for gifts for children, yet we currently have considerably more gift bags labelled ‘mum’ than we do labelled ‘girls 9 to 12 years’ which is our largest single group for requests.”
They are really short of gifts in several age brackets – from 9 to 12, 13 to 16 and 16 plus.
The six to eight and one to two age groups are “not doing particularly well either”, she said.
But the donations received so far have been great, Katherine added, with lots of cool ideas and time and effort put into choosing the right gift.