The Abbey House Museum in Kirkstall has launched an appeal to give isolated members of the Kirkstall community a great event this Christmas, writes Jill Buckley.
They will be hosting a community event this year to bring together 30 members of the community who may experience loneliness particularly over the festive period, to give them a chance to get out of the house and meet new people.
A large proportion of the Kirkstall community are older people living by themselves.
As part of the event the guests will be given a Christmas dinner and a present from Santa, and donations of both food and gifts, from individuals or businesses, are sought to help out the free event, which is volunteer run.
Any food that isn’t used at the event will be either be given to older people to take home or taken to St George’s Crypt.
There will also be a raffle and bingo and they would be grateful for donations of prizes for these too, either as individual gifts or items that could be added to a gift hamper for the raffle. As well as this there will be a choir and guests are invited to sing along, as well as people offering advice about staying safe and well in Winter.
Mark Kilvington, from the museum, said that all the effort was worth it to see the happiness it brought to people He added:
“It’s so nice to see all these people making new friends and staying in touch with each other and seeing their faces when Santa comes and brings them a present make it all worthwhile.”
If you can help please contact Mark by email mark.kilvington@leeds.gov.uk or phone on 0113 3784079. Or you can drop any donations off at the museum itself.
Gift donations can be dropped off at any time from now but people with donations of fresh food should wait until the weekend of 1st/2nd December.