Every year, CareYourWay hosts a community-driven event that changes many lives at Christmas. We’re both pleased and humbled to present you our 2021 edition of a “Present for a Pensioner”. A Present for a Pensioner gathers local businesses and individuals who wish to do good within the community to provide people who are spending their Christmas alone, or who have seen particularly difficult times as of late, with luxury hampers.
We were inspired to create a Present for a Pensioner after recognising the impact of loneliness in our community. With recent studies highlighting the impacts, loneliness is likely to increase the chance of death by up to 26% and could be as bad as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Shockingly:
- The number of over-50s experiencing loneliness is set to reach two million by 2025/6. This compares to around 1.4 million in 2016/7 – a 49% increase in 10 years.
- Half a million older people go at least five or six days a week without seeing or speaking to anyone at all.
- Well over half (59%) of those aged 85 and over and 38% of those aged 75 to 84 live alone.
- Two fifths all older people (about 3.9 million) say the television is their main company.
After recognising the harrowing impact of loneliness, we wanted to create an event that brought our local communities together. CareYourWay is franchising across the country, and all franchisees will also take a part in this event, holding their own local Present for a Pensioner in their area.
We are incredibly passionate and devoted to combatting loneliness on a much larger scale, and really hope that we can make a great change this Christmas. We really believe by sharing and getting as many eyes on this event as possible, we can increase the amount of participation, resulting in many more lives being changed for the better at a special time of year.
We have seen a fantastic uptake in this brilliant scheme, and we are delighted to be able to show you last year’s impact of our scheme.
We were wondering if you’d like to cover this event? We were absolutely humbled to have the Deputy-Inspector of the South West comment on our scheme, stating:
“The Christmas season can be a time of loneliness for vulnerable people. Reaching out to them with the annual “present for a pensioner” project is something to applaud. It is lovely to see such a wonderful project, letting those people trying to live an independent life know that they are not alone and there is a wider community out there ready to support and befriend them. This is something to commend.”
To help raise the awareness of those who kindly donate, we want to ensure that they all receive the recognition that they deserve. All individuals and businesses who contribute will receive a feature across our active social platforms, a special mention in this year’s video, a mention within the hampers themselves, a feature on both local and wider-reaching editorials, frequent updates on the event and how your kind contribution has effected individuals this year.
A hamper is around £30, but any donation/contribution is over and beyond (we don’t expect anyone to donate, but thought we’d leave the price in there in case any businesses decide that they do).
