KACW – Climb Every Mountain

It’s been a busy week! 60 people took an entire day to sort a mountain of clothing which we then saw grow again to the same size – a little demoralising at the time, but amazing to have so many donations!

The morale, despite this seemingly impossible task was surprisingly high and the students kept their spirits up, maintaining a fantastic attitude throughout the week!

Volunteers came from Yorkshire and Cambridge, as well as the local community and worked tirelessly for four days to see the job complete. The local press and TV came along to see what was going on and it’s hard to put into words the scale of clothing we were working with.

We don’t have photographs to show the entire number as these consignments are stored in different places, but I think from the pictures you can get an idea of the scale.

I can’t possibly mention everyone for fear of leaving someone out, but to the staff and students at Chilwell 6th form – an enormous thank you! To the local volunteers who came in whether for an afternoon or for the whole week – THANK YOU! And to those of you who travelled to Nottingham because you believe in the vision of Keep a Child Warm – I am humbled by your dedication and simply thankful to have you on board as our ambassadors in your respective areas.

Sarah Dickin came for a day with ten students from The National Academy. They have been involved with Keep a Child Warm since the beginning and THIS YEAR collected around 800 winter coats for the appeal! 

The final piece of the puzzle is a trip to London to The Sun HQ to collect (and pack) the thousands upon thousands of knitted items they received for us after setting the knitting challenge several months ago to celebrate the birth of Princess Charlotte. Brad, Jess and a team of volunteers will be visiting there on Monday so we will bring an update on that next week.  If you sent items in as a result of this challenge we would like to thank you for lovingly knitting such beautiful things and we will be honoured to give these things away to orphans and vulnerable children who will be extremely happy to receive your creations – thank you!

We can only manage to get these items into the right hands because of people making donations to Operation Orphan. We don’t have any government funding so we are fully reliant upon individual donations to continue this great work. That said, if you are reading this blog and would like to give to help us with this click the on below. 100% of your donation will be used for our projects.

Thank you,

Cyrilyn