We’ve had so much amazing support this festive season.
Here’s some stories full of Christmas magic to keep your spirits bright!
Our Southampton Day Centre received a huge donation of 859 food and drink items from the kind staff, students, and contractors of Southampton University. This was the largest donation that the centre had received this year.
The team would like to extend a huge thank you to Compass Projects, Durabilis, Suez, Rekan and FMS for their support, and to Raf and the students for considering them.
This will be invaluable to providing meals for the many clients who use the service every day!
Our services across Fareham and Gosport were in for a treat last week as One Box of Fudge donated £1,036.86 worth of essential items to their services!
One Box of Fudge is an amazing local fudge-making business which donates every penny of their profits to local charities. In total, they have raised more than £24,000 for local charities and causes!
We cannot express how thankful we are for their support.
Acts of kindness like this mean the world to us and our clients, especially at this time of year.
Our Kaleidoscope service recently hosted a festive Ladies Night!
Kaleidoscope is a unique service that provides support to women who sell sex on the street. This Christmas event was open to women in need across Southampton, providing a safe place for them to eat, chat, and get support.
A special thank you goes out to our support staff, Vicky and Jane, for organising and hosting the event, and to Sexual Health, CGL, Homeless Health Care, and the commissioner for joining in the evening.
Students from Southampton Solent University have been raising funds for the Night Light Café.
Evan Shepherd, 20, and Leah Wyman, 20, are third year media production students. They initially reached out to the café with an offer to help create social media content for the project, before setting up a online fundraiser.
Leah told the Daily Echo: “It’s been completely eye-opening doing this, especially going there and seeing how people can be struggling and needing support.”
Their original goal was to raise £150, and they have now raised more than £200.
Hope House has received piles of festive donations thanks to a community Christmas appeal.
The team at Portsmouth welcomed Jon Grant (pictured on the left), who organised the Danny Cracknell Homeless at Christmas Appeal 2025 along with Jock McMaster.
Donations of food and warm clothing were collected by kind people across the Ringwood and Fordingbridge community.
The Christmas appeal aims to help people through the difficult winter months, and was set up more than 30 years ago by the late former Mayor of Ringwood, councillor Danny Cracknell.
Items have been delivered to homelessness organisations across the South and Whitechapel, London.
A big thank you to the Danny Cracknell Homeless at Christmas team and the Ringwood and Fordingbridge community!
We hosted a Christmas door decorating competition in which we encouraged staff and clients to give a door in their service a festive makeover. After the quiz, the Client Engagement team were tasked with judging the entries.
The team chose a winner from central and from the services:
- Isle of Wight’s Christmas scene (top photo)
- Central service’s Christmas Carol (bottom photo, featuring Will from the Client Engagement Team handing over their prize)
Congratulations to the winners, your Christmas creativity knows no bounds!
Our Isle of Wight outreach service recently received a very generous donation from the Mindset Bros, a local community dedicated to breaking the silence around men’s mental health.
The community came together to self-fund 100 survival bags containing a variety of essentials from energy bars to lip balm!
Our outreach team will be hard at work distributing the bags to homeless people in need across the island.
A huge thank you to all of the team at the Mindset Bros!
Some of our team members recently visited Bournemouth University to give a talk to social work students about their experiences within their respective roles.
A special acknowledgement must be made for Lucy, who did an incredible job discussing addiction, and how this might look whilst being homeless, as well as her own experiences with being homeless and rough sleeping. She was also very happy to take any questions from the students.
Lucy said: “I really enjoyed speaking with the students about my experiences. I love advocacy work, and would love to continue doing these sort of events.”
A huge thank you to all of the team for sharing their knowledge and experience, great work!
Earlier this month, our teams observed Christmas Jumper Day by dressing in our finest festive garb.
Here’s the team at central services looking very sparkly, thank you to all who participated!
