Happy Holidays!

I Just wanted to share a couple little bits of festive fun and photos from this side of the pond – that our team at work participated in.

a) The Giving Tree – This year’s eBay giving tree supported over 200 individuals from birth to adult to make sure they had at least one gift under the tree.

b) In addition, several of us donated food and canned goods to Serve the City. On Wednesday, We taped, packed, hand wrote & decorated cards for 50 Holiday Hampers going to the needy. eBay is gift matching and donating 500 Euro to buy turkey and hams and other goodies for the boxes.

After the dry goods packing on Wednesday, on Saturday, December 19, starting out at 7am, 4 volunteers from Serve the City and 2 from eBay arrived bright and early to finish filling the Hampers with perishables – apples, oranges, bananas, bread, milk, butter, etc.

Once each box was full to the max, we closed them up and loaded the cars. A quick picture (my list of 7 in hand) and Santa hat on head – and deliveries started.

Overall, 50 surprise hampers were delivered to those living in poverty in the Dublin Area between 9am and Noon. They were so heavy, that they took 2 people to carry the box – sometimes a block, sometimes up several flights of stairs. The Hampers were well received by all I visited – Several elderly homebound individuals (I’m so glad you came! I needed food today!), several that had fallen on hard times (How did you know?!?), and one of whom was a lady in a wheel chair with her autistic son (Thank goodness! I wondered what we were going to do for Christmas dinner!).

The response was overwhelming – and later, we got an email sent by phone from one of the recipients:

hi, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for their thoughtfulness and for giving their time to organise the hamper for me. When I opened the box the first thing I saw was bread, I need bread today. Everything will get used especially the ‘goodies ‘.

Included in the box was a personal card from eBay- will you please pass on my thanks to them also.

Happy Christmas to all your volunteers.

(person’s name removed). XXX

Just goes to show – Little by little, we can make a difference. For me – this was the highlight of the season.