The Christmas Dinner in Wirral is a community project organised entirely by an independent group of volunteers who come together every year with one aim - to ensure young care experienced people have the very best Christmas Day possible. This means the best good quality gifts and a luxury food hamper full of all the very best goodies to take away at the end of the day. It's important that our guests spend the day in the most luxurious venue, and in Wirral we are supported by Tranmere Football Club who donate their boardroom so we get to offer our guests the greatest venue in town. We're growing - and as we grow so do our guests. We aim to treat more and more care experienced people every year, but need help to do it.
Planning for the big day takes place between September and December each year and the volunteers arrange a venue, presents, a chef, food, transport, volunteers, and often so much more – they create magic and memories that will last a lifetime.
It’s the sixth year for the Wirral Christmas Day Dinner. Our guests are vulnerable young care leavers; bright, young, resilient and tough young people who usually have no family to go to on Christmas Day and no better offer than to spend it with other care leavers and a group of well-meaning hosts and helpers who give up the day to help out. Every year, everything is donated, from time and trees, to mince pies and crackers, wrapping skills and presents. Our guests always tell us they are blown away by the care, warmth, effort and hospitality provided by the event. Our guests leave emotional but overjoyed by the kindness and sensitivity of our volunteers including the owner of Tranmere Football Club Club and his wife who always spend the day with us; and those behind the scenes who've made it all happen, including our beloved community over the previous 4 months. The food is donated by amazing restaurateur Art School Restuarant Chef Paul Askew no less.
Christmas in 2020 was a particularly challenging time but our volunteers worked tirelessly to make sure those young people with no family to turn to were able to have a Christmas Dinner delivered to their homes with the usual gifts etc, as Covid-19 meant that we were no longer be able to host our annual get together on Christmas Day.
We learnt through the pandemic that care leavers suffered terribly in many ways, not least because they have difficult family relationships as a result of many years in and out of care. Care leavers also struggled terribly to access IT and today this has been identified as internet poverty. For this reason, we made sure every guest received a Kindle Fire last year. This will help them to apply for work, training courses and education and also access free books and audiobooks from their look library. This year we want to go bigger and better, providing a special food hamper for all our guests to keep them well-fed between Christmas and New Year with a little extra to celebrate New Years Eve.
Guests with young children really make our day very special and we want to do the same for them, but little ones need extra care to make this day a very magical, memory and we need donations for this - we want to decorate our venue to look like Santa's grotto this year.
Your contribution to our funds will help make a memorable Christmas Day.