#FillYourBoot: AF Selection’s Christmas Campaign 2014
‘Tis the season for giving and sharing. The age old tradition of giving a gift to loved ones at Christmas has become more and more expensive. Those lists for Santa get longer and longer every year, and our own Secret Santa budget has had to rise with the times. I dread to think of poor Father Christmas’s bill! Personally, I loved the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert for 2014 – I know many didn’t – but not just for the fact of its brilliant cinematography. More for the simplicity of its message, at least in my eyes. Giving something small to someone when they have absolutely nothing, as Jim does to Otto, is a stark reminder of the ideal that giving something, no matter how small, can really make a difference. So we wanted to start a Christmas campaign.
Our Christmas Campaign
We’ve already talked about AF Selection’s donations this year to good causes. But we’ve decided to have one final beneficiary: our local food bank. The fact that people cannot afford the most basic of food is absolutely shocking. It’s something that shouldn’t be happening in a society such as ours, but, sadly, it is a reality. There have been a lot of campaigns on social media this year about giving advent calendars to food banks so families can have that extra treat that they just wouldn’t be able to afford. And food banks have been in the news more than ever before.
So we’ve decided to start a little campaign of our own – the “fill your boot” campaign. A quick call to our local foodbank (Trussell Trust in Erdington) revealed that they had just received a ‘massive collection’ from Tesco (fair play, Tesco!). So they weren’t as desperate as they had been at other times of the year. But that they always needed basic items like sugar, UHT milk, tins of fish and meat, and, that well-known ‘luxury item’, toilet roll.
As a business, it’s not a massive thing for us to nip down to the local supermarket and fill the boot of our car with some of these much needed items. We’d like to request that clients of ours do the same. We know you’re all a hugely generous bunch anyway, and we’re not saying that you’re all making millions. But it only cost us £84 to fill this modest boot, a mixture of company and individual donations.
What To Do
Perhaps you could organise for people in your office to bring in a couple of cartons of milk, a few bags of sugar, or those extra loo rolls from the buy-one-get-one-free. Then simply fill your boot when you’ve got enough. If you’ve got your Costco card, toilet rolls, tuna, tea bags, and UHT milk are really cost-effective. Otherwise, the budget range from your local large supermarket will go further than you think.
This doesn’t have to be about spending a fortune, and clearly this isn’t going to solve the country’s poverty problem. But it might just make someone’s life a little bit easier. This isn’t just going to run for the festive period, either. This is something we want to continue over the next twelve months. Just like a puppy, food poverty isn’t just for Christmas. So, let’s get this started and why not share your pictures with us and let’s #fillyourboot!
Try http://www.trusselltrust.org/ for your local food bank, but remember there are many independently run ones as well. And if you can’t afford to #fillyourboot completely, most supermarkets have a drop off point for the occasional item. Join our Christmas campaign!
