A huge and heartfelt thank you to The Northbrook Community Trust for their generous donation of £7500 which we received in December 2023.
It really is amazing to see how this funding, together with our other kind supporters, has been transformed into beaming smiles, sparkling eyes, and some extra special magic dust sprinkled over the children’s breaks in December to make this Christmas one to cherish.
Often, the children that join us will not have the treasured memories many of us associate with Christmas; it may be a struggle for their families to put food on the table at all, or heat the house. At Go Beyond, however, festive cheer was certainly not in short supply.
Our centres were decorated with dazzling lights, a Santa chimney and personalised stockings, fake snow and bejewelled Christmas trees.
Mealtimes were spent around our big tables beautifully adorned with crackers and napkins, plates loaded with delicious home-cooked Christmas dinners with all the trimmings, providing the perfect time for children to chat and share jokes.
Afterwards, they would snuggle up in the lounge-area with a Christmas film and a hot chocolate to warm their tummies before bed.
The children on these breaks went to the pantomime, visited the Charlestown Tunnel of Lights, went ice-skating, made Christmas gifts for their families, and received some amazing donated gifts themselves. Watching their eyes light up as they tore at the wrapping paper, and knowing how precious these moments were, was Christmas magic in its purest form.
Our breaks team at Go Beyond worked incredibly hard to give the most valuable gift of all to these children: hope.
However, none of this would have been possible without the support of our amazing family of funders, and for the lucky children who were recipients of Northbrook Community Trust’s donation, this opportunity to experience the true joys of Christmas was simply priceless.
This was more than just a break, they are now memories which will last a lifetime.
