Australia: Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal

Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal – Everyone Deserves a Good Time This Christmas
Helping families in need this Christmas.

Website: http://www.kmart.com.au/community/wishingtree/default.asp

How does it work?

Australia’s largest Christmas gift appeal, the Kmart Wishing Tree, celebrates its twenty first year this Christmas.

Established by Kmart, the Wishing Tree supports some of Australia’s largest welfare organisations - The Salvation Army, The Smith Family (NSW, Vic and WA), The Brotherhood of St Laurence (Vic) and Charity Link (a group of charities in Western Australia.

Since its inception, the appeal has distributed more than 4.14 million gifts over the past 20 years. This year the appeal aims to collect over 350,000 gifts for people in need.

Now an Australian Christmas tradition, the Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal is heavily relied upon by welfare groups to service the needs of their clients at Christmas time. So please help share the spirit of Christmas with someone in need because everyone deserves to have a good time at Christmas!

The 2008 Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal will run from 14 November until Christmas Eve.
Giving Is Easy...

Place a gift under the Kmart Wishing Tree
To participate in the appeal simply place a gift under the Christmas Wishing Tree located at the front of any Kmart store. Take a gift tag from the tree that identifies the age and gender of a suitable recipient and place it with your gift. Welfare groups associated with the appeal collect the donated gifts each week from Kmart stores and distribute them to people in need.

Or make a cash contribution
As an alternative to donating a gift, people can make a cash contribution at any Kmart store register. One hundred per cent of cash contributions are converted by Kmart into Kmart gift cards at the request of our charity partner. These gift cards are then distributed to people in need by the associated welfare groups, allowing appeal recipients to choose their own Christmas gift.

Get your school or workplace involved
Gifts do not need to be purchased at Kmart. Encourage a collection at your school or workplace and then take the gifts into your local Kmart store. It is a great exercise in giving and helping others at Christmas time.

Gift in lieu
Why not give a gift to the Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal on behalf of a loved one. Instead of buying a gift for someone place a gift under the Wishing Tree. Remember to take a thank you card and hand that over instead of a gift so that that they can share in your good deed.

UK: Salvation Army Christmas Present Appeal 2008

Website: Click here

How does it work?

From Friday 21 November until Friday 19 December members of the public across the country are invited and encouraged to donate gifts for children aged 0-16. The gifts will be then be distributed to needy children and their families in the local area through The Salvation Army's own networks, health visitors and social services.

New, unwrapped gifts may be dropped off in collection bins in any Superdrug store (find your nearest Superdrug store) or other local designated Salvation Army collection points (use post code search), from where a team of volunteers from The Salvation Army will collect the toys and take them to the local church or headquarters where they will be wrapped by members who will ensure it reaches a needy child or teenager in time for Christmas.

Suggested gifts for children/young pople

0-3 years: soft toys, educational toys - colourful and fun, cot mobiles etc, items of clothing (baby grows etc), bath toys, CDs with suitable music and nursery rhymes.

3-5: toys - dolls, cars, lorries, soft toys (suitable for boys and girls); educational games and toys (colourful and fun), books, CDs (music and nursery rhymes) DVDs and videos suitable for that age group, colouring sets, pencils, crayons, books, jigsaw puzzles

5-9: toys, educational games and toys, stationery (colouring sets, pencils, crayons, school sets) CDs and family friendly DVDs and videos, books, jigsaw puzzles, wordsearch, crosswords,

9-12: suitable games and toys, stationery, CDs, DVDs and videos, books, items of clothing including tee-shirts, hair ornaments (for girls!), gloves, scarves, hats

13-17: CDs, DVDs and videos, books, toiletries (please try to ensure non-allergic ingredients if possible), gloves, scarves, hats

UK: The Rotary Club Shoebox Scheme Rotary Club International’s Shobox Scheme (year round)…

UK: The Rotary Club Shoebox Scheme Rotary Club International’s Shobox Scheme (year round)…

Website: http://www.rotary1280.org/shoebox/

How does it work?

Rotary, Inner Wheel, Rotaract, Rotaserve and Interact Clubs purchase the special boxes from the Rotary Trustees (a small group of Rotarians who administer the scheme). The boxes are sent ‘flat packed’ to the Club. It is then up to the club as to where to send the boxes for filling. Often local schools, children’s uniformed organizations, church groups, elderly peoples homes, friends, relatives, etc., are the ones who enthusiastically fill the boxes.

The person filling the box, sellotapes a £1 coin to the top of the box. This is then retrieved by the local Club who, by this means, hopefully balance their books. The initial money retained by the Trustees is used mainly for transport costs to Eastern & Central Europe and for manufacturing the boxes.

The filled boxes are then returned to the central warehouse and for subsequent delivery to Eastern Europe.

Once delivered, distribution is overseen by Rotary Clubs, Spurgeons Child Care, Hope & Homes or the contacts of International Aid Trust, so ensuring that your gifts go to those most in need.

Do you believe in Father Christmas?

This essay was submitted to our academic elf department a year or so ago, and I thought this appropriate to be posted on this site. I should have posted it before but it seems to have been lost under a pillow. Sorry about that!

Does Father Christmas really exist?
In this essay I will argue that Father Christmas does exist. To support this I will show that there is some evidence in favour of his existence, but the main part of the essay is concerned with showing that existing alternative theories are in fact more ridiculous than the idea of Father Christmas. I will start by considering the meaning of the question and providing some definitions.

The question is asking whether there really is a person who delivers presents on December 24th each year. The question is inspired by growing speculation in some parts of the population that there is no such person, and that presents arrive by some other means. The chief opposing theory, which is the only one considered in this essay, is that your parents do it.

Various definitions of Father Christmas have been proposed; Rodney Elfman states ‘The main man. Don’ mess with Santa, he’s the boss around here’ (Elgman, 1988, p1) while Real Spoilsport holds a very different view ‘A fictitious character, traditionally said to deliver presents at Christmas’ (Spoilsport, 1953, p.31294). Small Toddler’s view is ‘Totally brill can’t wait’ (Toddler, 1993).

So it is apparent that there is an ongoing debate over the existence of Father Christmas. The easiest way to resolve this once and for all would be for somebody to wait up and take a photograph of the person delivering the presents. However, since seeing Santa on the night would result in the photographer getting a sack of cinders instead of presents, no researcher has yet volunteered for the task.

So we have no prospect of getting hard evidence, but such circumstantial evidence as there is points strongly in favour of Father Christmas. I will now consider this evidence. Firstly I will evaluate the evidence in favour, and then I will show why the evidence against is inadequate.

First hand accounts from those who are in contact with Father Christmas are available. Of course these could have been made up by those involved, but we should consider the solid reputation of these speakers.

Rudolph has been quoted as saying: ‘Of course he exists. Do you think me and the others would whiz round like idiots all night towing a sleigh with nobody in it?’ (Rednose, 1975, p48). Of equally good character is Henry the Elf, who said:

Yeah, I’ve heard that people say he [Father Christmas] doesn’t exist. But in a system of industrialised capitalism there has to be an identifiable owner in charge, otherwise we’d be operating some kind of commie co-operative operation, which we’re not. Frankly I don’t know where our profits go, but we don’t see any of them on the shop floor. Somebody’s creaming off the takings, and if that isn’t Father Christmas, I don’t know who else it could be.

(Elf, 1984, p 134)

On a personal level, my mum taught me not to lie, and so she obviously does not lie herself. I remember her telling me about Father Christmas many times, so I am personally convinced.

Further support is given when we consider that in modern homes there is no chimney, or existing chimneys have been blocked by gas or electric fires. It follows that whoever delivers presents must be magic, or else how could the presents get into a locked house.

Now we must consider the main alternative theory, which is that it is your parents who leave out your presents on Christmas Eve.

It is clear that it cannot be your parents. My mum lives eighty miles away, and has arthritis, so the idea that she travels to my house in the middle of the night and climbs up on the roof (for which she would have to bring a ladder, since mine is locked up) and then drops down the chimney to bring my presents seems much more unlikely than the idea that Father Christmas does it with magic at his disposal.

An argument used against the existence of Father Christmas he looks different whenever you see him in different shops or on different TV programmes. It is proposed then that these are people dressed up as Father Christmas, and therefore that the real Father Christmas does not exist.

There is a fundamental flaw in this logic. Just because people dress up as him does not mean he does not exist. You do not have to go to many fancy dress parties to see lots of different looking Queen Elizabeth IIs, yet we do not deduce from this that Queen Elizabeth II does not exist.

On weighing up the evidence available, while we cannot conclusively prove that Father Christmas does exist, we can demonstrate that some kind of magic is needed, and that the main alternative theory does not stand up to considered reflection. Upright characters have spoken in favour of his existence, and the fact that some people dress up as him is irrelevant. The evidence clearly leads us to conclude that Father Christmas does really exist.