Yet again this December, our teams, volunteers and local partners came together to create something truly special for people seeking sanctuary across the UK. What began as a simple act of kindness a few years ago has grown into one of our most heartfelt annual traditions — ensuring that everyone we support feels seen, valued and remembered during the festive season.

Thanks to the generosity, hard work and compassion of so many, this year’s Shoebox Appeal reached more people than ever before. Here’s a look at the incredible impact your efforts made:

This year, we wrapped 8,788 presents for more than 60 hotels during our two‑week Shoebox Appeal, supporting accommodation across the East and West Midlands, the East of England, and additional locations in Bristol, Doncaster, Leeds, Bradford, Northallerton, Halifax and Preston. With help from our wonderful volunteers, gifts were delivered directly to hotels or taken to the Post Office to be posted where needed.

We’ve already received some lovely feedback from hotel staff:

• “We appreciate and would like to sincerely thank each and every individual involved in organising the Christmas presents. We received the presents yesterday and have distributed them to clients, who truly appreciated them. Your generosity and effort made a meaningful difference and brought a lot of joy this Christmas.”
• “We just received our lovely gifts; the clients were shocked to receive anything! Very happy with the gift and thought of it.”

In addition to this, we also worked closely with our local partner organisations to help them deliver a further 2,220 presents to clients across the East and West Midlands and the East of England.

Altogether, an incredible 11,008 people seeking sanctuary received a present this Christmas.