Launch of Rotary in Calderdale Community Shoebox Appeal 2022 - how you can get involved

For the last 10 years, Rotary Clubs in Calderdale have run a very successful community spirited Christmas Shoebox Appeal which has benefitted over twenty local charities, many of them children.

By Christmas week 2021, just over 2,000 filled boxes, packed with ‘goodies’, had been distributed to needier people in Calderdale, both young and old.

Fillings had included children’s boxes as young as six months to teenagers, toiletries for males and females, and food boxes for all age groups.

Over the 10 years of the Shoebox Appeal 20,000 boxes have been given out across the borough.

The appeals co-ordinator, Rotarian Bryan Harkness, said: “This is the eleventh year our community is being asked to help fill boxes. The filled shoeboxes will enable us to give out many hundreds of presents at Christmas to those who might otherwise receive little.”

"There is still a great need locally to bring some joy at Christmas and Rotary’s annual appeal does just that.

“Who fills the boxes the reader may ask? Well the answer is townsfolk, students at schools, (some 30 plus are this year participating), and local businesses.

"To the schools and businesses, we are currently delivering the boxes as this publication is going to press. For readers to participate or indeed any association, club, church etc needing boxes then they may be collected and returned from the following outlets: Tesco Stores at Kings Cross and in Sowerby Bridge, Sainsburys Halifax, The Cook Shop at Harveys of Halifax and Marsh & Marsh Properties in Hipperholme.

"So readers why don’t you help? Let’s all try to put a smile on the face of a child or elderly person in December by picking up a box and return to any of the outlets by at the latest early December. The alternative fillings for the boxes this year are identified on the flap of each box.”

If any reader, school or business wants to join in or requires more information, Rotary’s contact is Bryan Harkness, [email protected] or 077770 471698.