Present Aid (feeding the hungry abroad)

Through Christian Aid's "Present Aid" scheme you can buy a whole range of "gifts that keep on giving" for individuals and communities in developing nations. We will be focusing on 4 gifts: Goats, Piglets, Cows and Floating Gardens. All these gifts are sustainable ways of helping families to feed themselves, and at the same time providing business opportunities and resources to help them get out of poverty. One of the fantastic things about this scheme is that this Advent Christian Aid are receiving match funding, which means for every £1 we donate, Christian Aid will receive £2. This is a real incentive to stretch ourselves in our giving this year, as all our efforts will be doubled, and that could make a life transforming difference to potential recipients of these gifts. If you would like to find out more about the individual gifts scroll down to the bottom of this article. Donations can be made through your son's, who can hand money in through their tutors or PSAs.

Wimbledon Foodbank (feeding the hungry locally)

Closer to home we will be collecting donations for the Wimbledon Foodbank. This provides a real life line for thousands of local families who are in very difficult situations. Donations can be made to PSAs or in the Chaplaincy. Please see below, the list of most needed items, and please make sure all donations are of a good quality and well within date.

• Milk (Longlife)
• Sugar
• Fruit juice (carton)
• Squash
• Tomato ketchup
• Tinned meat/fish
• Soup
• Pasta sauces
• Sponge pudding (tinned)
• Tomatoes (tinned)
• Cereals
• Tea Bags/instant coffee
• Tinned fruit
• Jam
• Biscuits or snack bars

Non food items: 

• Medium size soap powder
• Medium size fabric conditioner/softener
• Toilet paper
• Shampoo

More details on the Christian Aid "Present Aid" Gifts:

Goats: Provide milk which can be drunk by the family, and also turned into butter and cheese. The milk, cheese and butter can in turn be sold at the local market. Goats are also a good source of manure, which can obviously help families to grow some of their own crops, again both to feed themselves as well as potentially selling at market. Goats can eat vegetation that is not normally consumed by humans, helping to make them low maintenance to look after.

Piglets: Piglets are reared for their meat, and they breed quite fast, so are an ideal small business starter. With all these gifts, the aim is not just to provide a short term fix for the problem of lack of food, but to help combat the root causes of the poverty people find themselves in. By helping people to start businesses, they can earn money, enabling the to pay for medicines, send their children to school, and help lift themselves out of poverty.

Cows: Cows can be a source of huge amounts of milk, which can again be turned into cheese and butter, and sold at market. Like goats, cows also produce a lot of manure, useful for farming. Being larger animals, cows are also useful for transport (if you can only sell at market what you can carry on your own back, then the size of your business is limited, a cow can make a huge difference).

Floating Gardens: Are crops designed to withstand flooding, especially in Asian countries with monsoons and wet seasons. These gardens can help families farm without the fear that a flood might wipe out their whole crop for the year.