Altrusa Santa
Preparing for the weekend launch of ‘Santa to a Senior’ are Cambridge Altrusa Club members, from left, Maureen Blackstock, Jenny Shaw, Glenda Little, De-ane Busby and Alison Burr.
Public response to the inaugural ‘Santa to a Senior’ initiative launched last month has knocked the Christmas stockings off its organisers, the Cambridge Altrusa Club.
The project is intended to brighten the lives of seniors who will be without family over Christmas. Working in collaboration with an aged care facility, Altrusa set up a Christmas tree bearing written gift tags at Unichem Pharmacy in the hopes people would take a tag, buy a gift and return it in time for it to be wrapped and delivered to the senior in question before Christmas. The tags outline gift ideas for each recipient to a maximum of $25.
Altrusa’s Alison Burr said: “We have had such a huge response to the project… I think the article in Cambridge News really got it going. Within 48 hours from that appearing, we had only 10 of the 26 initial gift tags left.”
She said thoughts to bring the project to an early close quickly evaporated when community support for the project ramped up and other aged-care facilities came on board to add to the one facility initially involved.
Alison said the quality of gifts coming in was awesome.
“There are a lot of initiatives at this time of year for children or families,” she added. “This is unusual in that it is specifically aimed at the elderly. Theirs is a demographic that is often overlooked.”
The project will run to December 21, when the returned gifts will be collected, wrapped and labelled before being delivered to recipients on Christmas Day.
The club is part of Altrusa International, a global service organisation focused on education and literacy. The Cambridge club raises funds annually for distribution to several community organisations.
Alison said such a positive community response means the ‘Santa to a Senior’ initiative will definitely be back next year.
