Christmas charity to meet gift demand by collecting the presents back in January
Full Circle Christmas says one donated present can now serve twenty-six children, a ratio its director calls fully circular.
A Christmas gift charity says it has found a way to absorb this winter's surge in demand: hand the presents out, collect them in January, and hand them out again next December.
The charity, Full Circle Christmas, calls the model Circular Gifting. Each donated present is tagged, lent to a household for the festive period and retrieved by volunteers on the first Friday of the new year. The trust estimates that one sturdy toy can serve twenty-six children across three winters.
"The magic is in the unwrapping, not the owning," said director Carol Winters. "We haven't reduced demand. We've made it circular."
Charities across the country report that more families are asking for help with presents as bills climb. Full Circle Christmas said the surge had been absorbed without a single new donation, because the stock now comes home.
A pilot in one market town has run for three years on the same boxes. Organisers said children had started recognising particular toys from previous winters, a trend Winters described as "brand loyalty".
Next year the trust will trial the model on turkeys.
