We love the season of giving.
The week before Christmas, our Crossroads team met with six major NGOs from across Hong Kong to distribute over 7,000 toys.
We were giving Barbie dolls, dinosaur trucks and colour-changing chameleons for those NGOs to distribute to young lives who otherwise, at Christmas, might miss out on the special treasures more easily affordable to others.
Recipients will include children whose families are on the economic edge of society, refugee kids, children whose parents are recovering from drug addiction or little ones whose parents have medical need and therefore little resource for life’s ‘extras’.
On Dec 20th., our team donned festive hats and opened our containers to distribute the toys.
7,000 young lives brightened just a little this Christmas!
It will come as no surprise that Vietnam’s rural villages see many trapped in poverty. What is a surprise, perhaps, in today’s world, is that this grip is much stronger on women than men. As a young girl, Huong took every step she could to change that story. The odds were not in her favour. Her father had died when she was little and her mother, dependent on seasonal earnings from their little family farm, needed to bring up five children alone. “All I can give you is education,” she told her children. “Study, study, study!”
The calls began in earnest mid 2015 as a surge of global interest grew in response to the refugee crisis. In Calais, France, an informal camp appeared, known as the ‘Jungle’. It grew rapidly, though without decent facilities or permanent shelter. There were hundreds of unaccompanied minors among the refugees, children in hugely vulnerable situations. Through our Global Hand service, many people across the channel, in the UK, wanted to reach out. Our Global Hand office ran hot, throughout the duration of the Calais Jungle, guiding donors by phone and email to see the needed goods reach those stranded in this heartbreaking location.
Volkswagen astonished us by donating two people passenger movers, Caravelles and a Polo, perfect for moving our team around. Rather than sell these slightly used company cars, Volkswagen chose to donate them to us. An awesome gift!
Facts, figures, data… The creative IT company, Qlik, ‘automagically’ lets you see your data through different ‘lenses’ , in visual form, or graphs or charts. That ‘view’, in turn, lets us manage our systems better which means we can better serve people in need. Amazingly, Qlik has donated its services to us. Their example is proof positive that companies can help people in need by using their expertise. And all at a ‘Qlik’!
