In the lead up to Christmas, students at Royal Holloway rallied together to support the local community and those further afield.

Love in a Box collection

Love in a Box

Royal Holloway’s volunteering team organised its annual Love in a Box appeal, in support of the Foundation for Social Change and Inclusion (FSCI) Christmas Box Appeal.

Each box is wrapped in festive paper and filled with small gifts such as soap, stationary, gloves, hats, toys and sweets. The boxes are distributed to orphanages, poorer communities, women’s refuges, refugee camps, prisoner’s children, isolated older people or disabled people in Bulgaria and Serbia.

Local Surrey businesses also got involved by donating shoeboxes and vouchers to buy gifts to fill the boxes, with over 130 boxes made up by students, staff and the local community.

Santa’s Workshop

Students from Royal Holloway’s Christmas Volunteering team worked closely with Age UK Surrey to create Christmas gift bags, which were then distributed to older people in the local community who may have been spending Christmas alone.

The students packed 140 festive gift bags, with each bag containing gifts such as hand cream, socks, mince pies, a Christmas pudding, a diffuser and some sweet treats.

Local businesses and Students’ Union societies donated mince pies and gift bags. They were then collected and distributed by Age UK Surrey, Manor Farm Day Centre and The Grove Court Retirement Housing in Egham.