A Paddington Community Christmas

Our Paddington Christmas elves have been sprinkling festive magic all around the local community in the run up to Christmas. Our Christmas volunteering events began with decorating a local primary school on 22 November, and since then over 250 volunteers from 14 Paddington companies have contributed over 800 hours of their time bringing seasonal joy to local schools and charities.

Volunteers from Vodafone have been particularly busy this Christmas, working across the community to support 10 different events. Our first festive team of the year decorated a Christmas tree at St Mary Magdalene & St Stephen’s CE Primary School, with another group of Vodafone Christmas angels spending the next day decorating Open Age for the season. Vodafone colleagues then went on to decorate a further two schools and to design magical festive grottos for children to visit Santa at St Peter’s School and College Park School. Santa’s Vodafone helpers also supported the Christmas Fair at the Marylebone Project, helping to prepare and serve refreshments and getting stuck into Christmas crafts. A separate team headed to King Solomon Academy to help out with their winter fair, with volunteers leading the hook a duck and tin can stalls, entertaining excited children queuing for a bouncy castle, and helping to set up and pack away quickly and efficiently. Vodafone colleagues also shared a bit of Christmas spirit with older people, delivering a festive craft session at Penfold Community Hub and leading a quiz and raffle at Open Age’s festive jumble sale.

Paddington volunteers were dedicated to sharing the fun of the season with local children, leading Christmas parties and decorating schools and children’s centres. On Giving Tuesday, volunteers from Visa channeled their Christmas spirit and created an exciting Santa’s grotto at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee School. Teams from Vodafone and Convatec followed a week later to ensure the entire school was as sparkling and magical as possible ahead of the festive season. A team of volunteer elves from IQVIA headed to Wilberforce Primary School to decorate and lead a Christmas craft workshop, followed by Equinor’s Christmas helpers who went into Wilberforce the following day to wrap Christmas gifts and decorate the school hall. Equinor volunteers then went on to throw a Christmas party complete with festive goodie bags for local children at the Beethoven Centre, where colleagues helped children create gingerbread masterpieces and led a number of rounds of pin the nose on Rudolph! Teams from M&S and Kingfisher headed over to the Tresham Centre for Disabled Children & Young People, turning playrooms into a riot of Christmas colour and creating festive selfie frames and a snowy postbox for their grotto. On 12 December, Takeda volunteers showed up en masse to wrap a wonderfully generous 200 gifts for Cosmic, supporting babies and children in hospital this Christmas.

Colleagues from a range of companies have played a huge part in bringing Christmas to LDN London, a local charity supporting people with learning disabilities and autism. On 30 November, volunteers from across the Brunel building set the tone for the season by leading a Christmas party at LDN’s Community Hub, which was later decorated with lots of yuletide sparkle by a Kingfisher team. Colleagues from Takeda took on the challenge of decorating two Christmas trees and a number of indoor and outdoor spaces at one of LDN’s residential sites, leaving it looking magical ahead of their annual Christmas celebration for staff and service users.

Festive helpers also got together to support and celebrate older people this yuletide season, with colleagues from Paddington Square decorating Penfold Community Hub, where Vodafone colleagues also led a Christmas card making workshop. Volunteers from IQVIA and Vodafone led Christmas parties and jumble sales for Open Age, complete with raffles, quizzes and of course a lot of festive music!

If our wonderful Christmas elves have left you inspired to get involved, get in touch with our Community team to find out how you can help in Paddington all year round.