Christmas Present Appeal 2025

The Welsh Sports Association (WSA) has been delighted to work with the Christmas Present Appeal in recent years to help get gifts to children living in poverty during the festive period.

In 2024, the appeal managed to donate gifts to over 500 children in poverty in the local community. Since the appeal began in 2019, over 1200 children have received gifts as a result of collective generosity, including within the sprot and leisure sector.

The local schools supported have been overwhelmed with your generosity over the years and the positive impact this has had on local communities. Christmas is a lovely time of year, but along with this comes immense pressure for mothers, fathers, and guardians living in poverty who are already having to decide whether to put the heating on or put food on the table.

As a brief reminder, the local schools identify the families and children most in need in the local community, we then distribute these anonymised details to the volunteers who go out and buy the items that make up the gift bag. These are all dropped off at a central hub, picked up by the schools and distributed directly to the relevant families.

The gift bag consists of three core items:

(1) something warm (e.g. blanket / hat & gloves)

(2) a toy (In addition you can add a small book)

(3) chocolates

The gifts are then placed into a gift bag (unwrapped). This should be manageable with a budget of £20.

For those who want to spend slightly more, we would please ask you to volunteer to support more than one child rather than going over budget. This helps to ensure the gifts received are of an equal value.

If you would like to be a part of this year’s initiative, please email [email protected] with your full name and the number of children you would like to be allocated. You will then receive a follow-up email with the relevant details

If you would like to take part but do not have the time to shop for the gifts, a donation of £20 per child can be made and Christmas Present Appeal can purchase the gifts on your behalf. Please get in touch for further details.

Gifts will need to be dropped off to the WSA office in the Sport Wales National Centre by Monday 8th December. Failure to do so may leave your allocated child without a gift. Christmas Present Appeal volunteers will then help to distribute the gift bags before the schools break up for Christmas.