A season of solidarity: eight tasks empowering individuals this Christmas

From small villages to huge cities, communities throughout the UK are discovering sensible, people-powered methods to help each other this festive season. Whether or not providing heat locations to assemble, sharing instruments and abilities, decreasing waste or ensuring kids and households really feel remembered at Christmas, these grassroots tasks present how native motion can create significant change. 

1. Heat Welcome – preserving individuals heat whereas combatting loneliness

Staying heat and linked could be a problem for many individuals throughout winter, significantly as social isolation continues to have an effect on individuals of all ages. Round 7% of the UK inhabitants now experiences continual loneliness, based on current figures.

Based in 2022, the Heat Welcome marketing campaign now coordinates greater than 5,900 free areas throughout the UK. Final winter, these venues hosted round 2.6m visits, providing individuals a welcoming place near residence. Many present free sizzling drinks, biscuits and neighborhood lunches, whereas some additionally supply casual recommendation and help.

“Many Heat Welcome Areas up and down the nation organise Christmas meals for individuals, particularly those that would in any other case be alone over the festive interval,” says Lucy Rouse, the marketing campaign’s communications supervisor.

Heat Welcome Areas might be discovered by way of this on-line map.

2. Library of Issues – lending home goods

Primarily based throughout London, the women-led social enterprise Library of Issues goals to make borrowing higher than shopping for, for individuals and the planet. Members can lease every little thing from drills and carpet cleaners to strain washers and projectors, avoiding the associated fee and waste of shopping for gadgets hardly ever used.

First launched in south London in 2014, the Library of Issues now has 21 places within the capital, plus greater than 39,000 members. This winter, it’s serving to residents enhance power effectivity by loaning out a thermal imaging digicam at no cost from its neighborhood sharing hubs.

Often costing £15 per day to lease, ‘Thelma’ the thermal digicam will likely be free to borrow till 2 January 2026, due to help from native councils and companions. The digicam helps establish draughty home windows and doorways, warmth loss behind radiators and early indicators of damp.

A whole lot of Londoners have already borrowed the gadget. “I borrowed Thelma to examine the place my previous Victorian flat was shedding warmth,” says Katherine, a Hammersmith-based borrower. “Now I do know that there’s one window that’s letting all of the chilly air in. I’ve put thermal curtains up, and trusty Thelma reveals that the curtains have made a giant distinction. Wanting ahead to a extra cosy winter forward.”

3. Simply Serving to – Christmas tree-cycling

For households questioning what to do with their actual Christmas tree as soon as the festivities finish, UK charity Simply Serving to presents a easy resolution. Its annual Large Christmas Treecycle Enchantment collects timber from properties throughout the nation and places them to good use.

Following final Christmas, 3,070 volunteers collected 73,000 timber at no cost, with native companies typically donating vans, gasoline and employees time. In return, households are invited to make a donation to help charities and neighborhood teams of their space. Final yr, the attraction raised £1.54m for greater than 150 causes, together with hospices, ladies’s refuges, meals banks and youngsters’s charities.

“Our society is in want of a way of neighborhood, a world the place individuals care about one another, not simply their very own private achievements,” says founder Nick Stammers. “Simply Serving to’s key purpose is to re-engage communities into contributing and supporting their native and wider neighborhood.”

The timber are chipped moderately than despatched to landfill, with the wooden reused in parks, gardens and nature areas to enhance soil well being and biodiversity. Households can now e book their 2026 assortment, and volunteers are inspired to get entangled.

4. KidsOut – gifting for youngsters in want

Primarily based in Birmingham, kids’s charity KidsOut helps kids residing in refuge after fleeing home abuse. Its Giving Tree marketing campaign presents organisations and people the prospect to purchase a particular reward requested by a toddler, utilizing tags that give their identify and what they wish to obtain.

Items might be delivered to assortment factors throughout Birmingham or bought on-line by way of a QR code, the place they’re saved safely till Christmas. This yr, the charity says it has seen a surge in requests for help from Birmingham and north-east England, alongside the ladies’s refuges it already works with.

“Many of the mother and father and youngsters who arrive in a refuge after fleeing abuse don’t have any possessions with them,” says CEO Sara Williams. “They flip up on the doorstep traumatised with solely the garments they’re carrying, having left every little thing that was acquainted behind them, together with household, pals, pets, college, employment, and belongings.”

KidsOut ensures that each baby arriving in refuge receives a field of brand-new toys and Christmas presents, distributed with the help of Sussex Police Federation. Final yr, greater than 75,000 presents had been gifted nationwide.

“For a lot of, it will likely be the primary time the kids could have owned new toys,” stated Williams.

Items might be bought from the charity’s web site from as little as £7.

5. Restore cafes – fixing it, not binning it

Restore cafes at the moment are working worldwide, serving to individuals to repair damaged gadgets moderately than throw them away. From defective fairy lights to broken toys and electronics, these volunteer-run periods lengthen the lifetime of on a regular basis objects. Knowledge from restore cafes means that in 60% of circumstances, chord for Christmas fairy lights might be mounted.

Twickenham Restore Cafe in south London has been working for 4 years and has helped almost 3,000 individuals. Volunteers restore a variety of things together with “lawnmowers, iPads, shears that wanted sharpening, clothes that needing stitching, in addition to clocks, Christmas tree lights, DVD gamers, lamps, chairs with wonky legs, and tons of different stuff,” explains Colin Messenger, who works there.

The cafe estimates that it has saved round 40 tonnes of things from landfill and at present works with round 50 volunteers.

The following restore cafe will happen on 20 December. “We encourage individuals to decorate up and be part of us in consuming home-made cake, and ingesting recent espresso as we do some hearty repairs,” provides Messenger. 

6. Nationwide Power Motion – offering heat packs

The charity Nationwide Power Motion focuses on tackling gasoline poverty and serving to individuals keep heat at residence. Every winter, it distributes free ‘winter heat help packs’ to households most in want.

The packs embrace sensible gadgets equivalent to a hooded blanket, radiator reflectors, power environment friendly mild bulbs, draught proofing strips and a thermos-style flask, alongside sachets of soup or sizzling chocolate. Recipients additionally obtain personalised recommendation from specialist groups.

Nationwide Power Motion says that it’s bringing the reward of heat and hope immediately into individuals’s properties – not simply at Christmas however when homeowners want it essentially the most. The packs are assembled by tons of of volunteers throughout annual packing days and value between £50 and £80 to place collectively.

7. Social Chunk – supporting these with expertise of homelessness

The homelessness charity Social Chunk is working its Pageant of Kindness for the sixth yr, aiming to deliver pleasure and sensible help to individuals experiencing homelessness. What started in Edinburgh has now expanded to 5 cities, with ‘timber of kindness’ put in in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Birmingham and London.

Every tree shows a wishlist created by individuals with lived expertise of homelessness. Supporters can hand-deliver gadgets equivalent to heat clothes, toiletries, toys, sizzling water bottles, torches and telephone top-ups.

These collaborating on-line can donate £28, which the charity says “may present somebody with a sizzling Christmas meal, a present, a bundle of important gadgets and a mattress for the night time”.

8. Local weather Motion Stokesley and Villages – instructing eco-crafting

On the fringes of the North York Moors, Local weather Motion Stokesley and Villages (CASAV) describes itself as “a gathering of eco aware minds from just a few villages”. The group works year-round to advertise sustainability, together with through the festive season.

CASAV not too long ago hosted a sustainable Christmas stall at Stokesley Market, giving freely draught excluders produced from waste material and sharing recommendation on decreasing waste, making pure decorations and buying regionally.

The group additionally runs eco-crafting periods for all ages, with one workshop turning undesirable library books into “beautiful angels and Christmas timber”.

CASAV volunteers additionally knit blankets from scrap wool for the ‘blankets for the world’ initiative, they usually accumulate surplus meals from native supermarkets each night time for redistribution. “Stopping meals going to waste and guaranteeing these in want get to eat that night time is a win-win,” says a spokesperson.

The group is in search of extra volunteers to assist develop its actions.

Predominant picture: Social Chunk