News story

Mission Christmas 2018 - Update

Another brilliant fundraising effort by Sellafield Ltd employees and the supply chain has made a difference to children’s lives at Christmas.

Sellafield Ltd apprentices handing over the gifts from the Shoe Box Appeal to AgeUK, Whitehaven.

Sellafield Ltd apprentices handing over the gifts from the Shoe Box Appeal to AgeUK, Whitehaven.

Five charities have benefited from donations generated by the Sellafield Ltd Christmas Campaign 2018.

The main Christmas charity that was supported in Cumbria was CFM’s ‘Cask4Kids Mission Christmas’ appeal, to make sure every local child wakes up with a gift on Christmas day.

The charities that the Warrington office supported were: Home Start Warrington, Families and Wellbeing Toy Appeal, Room at the Inn and the Y project.

This was the total amount raised:

  1. Shoebox appeal for the elderly on behalf of AgeUK - 280 shoe boxes full of gifts sourced and delivered by Sellafield Ltd apprentices to elderly care home residents in the local area of Workington, Cockermouth, Whitehaven, Egremont and Millom. An additional £289.42 was handed over to AgeUK from a cake sale.
  2. Cask4Kids ‘Mission Christmas’ - £20,675 worth of gifts and £1,609 cash donations which helped over 318 children and equated to 948 gifts in total.
  3. Home-start Warrington - Christmas Eve hampers for 37 children.
  4. Families and Wellbeing Toy Appeal - 600 gifts from Sellafield and supply chain partners were collected from around the Warrington area, which helped 390 children.
  5. Room at the Inn, Warrington - Hundreds of tins and toiletries donated and cash from the Christmas Jumper day for the Room at the Inn and the Y project, bringing their total up to £800 of donations.

Katie Jones, charity manager for CFM, said:

We are over the moon with the contribution of gifts and toys from the people at Sellafield Ltd and in the supply chain.

The quality of gifts donated is amazing and makes a huge difference to those children who would have, without our help, received very little or nothing at all on Christmas morning.

I know that some donations will have gone in to drop off points in the local area, so the total contributions are no doubt more.

The total number of children helped through Mission Christmas 2018 was 8,031 which was an increase of 143 from 2017.

Sandra Dempsey from Age UK West Cumbria said:

Can I say a huge thank you to everyone involved in this project. The generosity of your staff and the hard work and effort of the wonderful apprentice team were appreciated by us all here at Age UK West.

Community liaison officer Pauline Deans, Sellafield Ltd said:

We are overwhelmed with everyone’s generosity. We’re glad that children in our local area could wake up on Christmas morning to a gift under the Christmas tree and that homeless people can enjoy a hot meal and a roof over their head at Christmas, thanks to everyone’s kind donations.

Published 16 January 2019