Hello, 

Thank you for visiting this page! I am the founder of the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation and this is the fundraising page for Christmas 2017. You can find out more about the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation here: https://www.awtf.org/alexandra-s-story 

This Christmas we will be creating food bags to provide food for 2,000 vulnerable children and adults, as well as homeless young people. We will also be holding satellite Christmas
lunches for young people who don’t have a family to go to.  We work very closely with a variety of vulnerable young people and adults. alongside food parcels providing some 2000 meals for vulnerable children and adults.  To complete this task, we need to raise £10,000.  If you, or any one you know, work in companies which have access to goods such as toiletries, children’s presents, stationary, bedding and dry food we would love gifts in kind too. Every little thing goes a long way to change Christmas for a group that are so often neglected at this time fo year. For any questions or organisation of gifts in kind, please email us at  Info@awtf.org. 

What are these food parcels? 
We pack a bag that is about the size of a suitcase with food. We fill these bags up with pasta, rice, tuna, vegetables, various spreads such as jams and preserves. We also provide basic toiletry provisions and then, because it is Christmas, we also include a family game such as Scrabble or Monopoly. 

Why food parcels? 
We hand these bags out just before Christmas to families who can barely manage financially and who have relied on us throughout the year. Christmas is a hard time for many people across the country, but it is especially hard for those who have relied upon school lunches throughout the school year to feed themselves, or feed their children. Over Christmas there is no school, and with that, no school lunches, that leaves children from exceptionally poor homes are at higher risk of hunger. 

Satellite Lunches? 
Satellite lunches take place at various points across London. Instead of holding one large Christmas lunch which can prove an issue with finding a space and also travel arrangements for larger distances, we hold a few smaller dinners. These dinners are held mostly for care leavers. They are often care leavers who have grown up in Children’s Homes and are now living on their own. Without our Christmas day dinner, they would be completely alone, with nowhere to go and no presents. Often, they feel too ashamed to accept invites to other people’s homes because they fear imposing on them, and as they put it “being a charity case. ”They enjoy the Christmas lunch we hold because coming together with others in similar circumstances helps reduce the shame.

So what happens at the lunch?
The Christmas Day lunch begins with picking
up the young people from their homes or homeless shelters.  We gather in different venues where games are provided for the young people and we have Christmas music playing.  At first there is shyness and a bit of isolation, but once they’ve pulled crackers and the meal has started, the young people relax and begin to chat to each other, play games and before long they’re all dancing. Just before they leave we provide each young person with a bag of Christmas gifts, this includes lots of food, usually a winter jacket, a warm top, some gloves and hats and lovely toiletries. It’s wonderful to see their delight as they receive their gifts, but its also very poignant as you can see that they really don’t want to leave to go home. There are therapeutic workers available during the lunch, as many of the young people have experienced significant loses and traumatic childhood abuse. Christmas highlights the discrepancy between their difficult lives and the family cohesion that is portrayed in the media. The therapeutic workers help the young people manage what is a great deal of sadness during the Festive season. However, the friendship and peer support generated by fellow Care Leavers is very uplifting.  The Christmas lunch ends up being a joyful and replenishing event. The young people are driven back home at the end of the day.

Thank you for any share, like or donation to this page helps to make a potentially miserable day a happy one for families who’ve gone through a great deal of pain and remain inspirational.