'We get to spread the love' - local mum's charity will give 600 less fortunate children presents under the tree this year
More than 600 underprivileged children will get presents under their tree this year thanks to the hard work of a Wolverhampton Christmas charity.
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The Wolverhampton Christmas Hamper Appeal, set up by mum-of-six Caroline Wooton, is this year marking its 12th anniversary.
Every year, the hard-working volunteers appeal to the community for toy donations, then put them all together in hampers and present sacks and deliver them to schools, community centres and families who are struggling to make ends meet.
Caroline, who works as an operations manager, said it all started when her daughter Grace, who was four at the time, saw an advert by children's charity NSPCC and decided she wanted to help less fortunate children.
"Grace told me she wanted to give a child a present off her own Christmas list. So I went on Facebook and wrote a post about how amazing my daughter is, as you do," the 41-year-old joked.
"Then suddenly I started getting comments from people who said they would donate if I started the toy appeal for less fortunate children, and it started from there."
The charity has gone from strength to strength every year with the help of the trustees - Caroline herself, her husband Karl, Tracey Hale, Karen Train, and Darren Train.
The group starts collecting the toys in the middle of September every year, and last weekend spent over 20 hours to packaging up hampers for 149 families. They have each been delivered a hamper as well as a Santa sack full of toys, all of which were donated by the kind-hearted community.
Caroline shared her thanks with everyone who made it possible, including BT for lending some of their vans to deliver the gifts, Openreach for allowing the group to use their office space to package up the hampers, and TDS Builders for paying for all the hamper boxes.
"Thank you to everybody that donated to the Wolverhampton Christmas Hamper Appeal," she said. "We have managed to help so many families, about 600 children. Everybody together has made a lot of children smile. It's taken our volunteers around 20 hours this weekend to put these together, and without you we couldn't have done this. Thank you!
"It's just so nice that I get to help other people spread the love at Christmas."
