Making a difference with My Choice Children's Homes Christmas gift appeal

My Choice Children’s Homes is a group of nine Children’s Homes and two schools predominantly based in Sussex. They look after children from the age of seven through to eighteen. They offer care, nurture, and support to the children so they can progress, mature, and develop individually. My Choice ensures children develop and grow their independence skills to support them as they enter adult life.

Director Dawn Ives said: “Our mission is to engage our children in charity work and giving to others. This provides the children with a real sense of how they can help others, and we believe that there is no better way of giving back than to work with local charities.

“Our children have engaged in various activities throughout the past year raising money for several different charities, such as MacMillan, a Local Fire Fighters Charity, a Ukrainian charity, and Chestnut Tree House. We have completed bake sales, sponsored walks, family fun days, raffles and been involved in competitions such as an Easter Egg Hunt, guess the weight of the cake and how many sweets are in the jar.

“Over the past 12 months we have raised over £2,500 for these different charities, as well as providing 600 wrapped gifts for the children and families at Chestnut Tree House last Christmas.

“This year we have teamed up with Sussex Barn in Horsham again and chosen to support local homeless charities throughout Sussex. It is a sad reality that around 11% of children placed in care will end up homeless, so this is a charity very dear to our hearts and one we want to help make a difference. We are gathering backpacks full of toiletries and food, as well as blankets and warm clothing to give to these charities in December.

“Our appeal will come to an end on December 3, 2022 when we will join Sussex Barn for a Christingle event, an evening for fun and laughter with carol singing and a dance group, and a final push for the raffle and opportunity for our last bit of fundraising before we pass everything over to our chosen charities.

“We are very pleased to be supporting BHT Sussex, Crawley Open House and Worthing Soup Kitchen, as our chosen charities and look forward to gathering as many donations as we can for them.”

The itemsthey are looking for are:

* Socks, gloves & hats.

* Warm clothing such as tracksuit bottoms.

* New sleeping bags and rucksacks

* New underwear

* Non-perishable foods such as tins.

* Cup a Soups

* Instant noodles

* Crisps

* Chocolate

* Cereal bars

* Hand gel, tissues, baby wipes, deodorant

* Small Hand-held torches, USB chargers, Biro pens, Puzzle books, adult Colouring books and pencils, hot/cold Flasks etc.

They would also welcome any Raffle prizes that we can enter in our draw on December 3, 2022.

Drop off places for donations are:

My Choice Children’s Homes, Unit 3a Mill Green Business Estate, Mill Green Road, Haywards Heath, RH16 1XQ

or One Rent, Avery House, Brunel Place, Crawley, RH10 1JB.