‘Giving Tree’ connects you with children who need gifts this Christmas

A shopping centre in Hartlepool has collected more than 100,000 gifts for children who were otherwise unlikely to receive a Christmas present this year.

Middleton Grange Shopping Centre has operated an annual Giving Tree for more than 10 years, but the process was taken online for the first time this December due to the pandemic.

Through the website, users can select a tag bearing a child’s gender, age and suggested present. They then purchase the item and send it to the shopping centre, where charity volunteers will match it with a child in need.

The website states: ‘Many of the recipients are children who have escaped domestic violence, being forced to flee their homes quickly and leave all possessions behind. Without Giving Tree, these children may not otherwise receive a gift at Christmas.’

Mark Rycraft, the manager of the shopping centre and founder of the Giving Tree, said they previously delivered around 750 presents a year. This year the website has exploded with popularity, allowing 104,000 people across world to buy gifts.

He has now created a ‘workshop’ using one of the shopping centre’s empty retail units to collect all the donations. He told the Northern Echo he was ‘utterly and completely humbled and overwhelmed’ by the number of donations.

He went on: ‘There are so many young people or those in care who don’t have essentials or a ball to kick around. 

‘There are a lot of people under the radar and those who access services that need some love, care and attention.’

Mr Rycraft said the shopping centre started out with designated families, but have since researched what presents children and older vulnerable people might like for Christmas so they can help ‘even more people’ this year.

Some of the items on the website include bath toys, board games, lego, pyjamas and Play-Doh.

For those of you who would like to give something back this Christmas, there is a giving tree set up to allow you to buy gifts for children living in Hartlepool who have escaped domestic violence…many will wake on Christmas morning with only these gifts to open🎄🎁 please share pic.twitter.com/2VzxgkgxbM

— Annika (@annikawile) November 27, 2020

The creators of the website, In Studio, are running it for free, while those sorting the presents at the shopping centre have nicknamed themselves ‘elves’.

To buy a child a Christmas present through the Giving Tree, click here.

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