One of the things we do every year as part of our Christmas preparations is support the Boys’ Brigade Share-A-Gift Project. Giving to the BB project has been a part of my December for a long time and I still recall dropping off items at the Sharity Gift Boxes (remember those?) along Orchard Road years ago. When the kids came along, I made more of a concerted effort to involve them in the process of buying and donating the items and it’s become part of our family’s Christmas giving over the years.
We usually drop off items at the collection centres at NTUC Fairprice as part of our grocery runs, but this year, I also made a special trip with the children to the Singapore Sports Hub Fairprice Xtra for one morning for our BB Share-A-Gift Project this year. The reason was to find this:
A Wish Tree!
This year, instead of just groceries, I thought it would be nice if we could also do something special for someone in need and buy them a special gift. On the Wish Trees are specific requests — christmas wishes — from selected beneficiaries. For children who are able to get just about anything they ask for, I thought it would be meaningful for Noey and Mei to buy a gift for someone else this Christmas who does not find things as easy to come by.
There were only five Christmas wishes left when we swung by in early December. And maybe it was because we were at the Sports Hub, but almost all of the requests were for shoes! We looked through the wishes and picked one by a 15 year-old girl for a pair of running shoes. Noey and I agreed that we’d make some time to shop for running shoes together another day.
We spent the morning shopping at Fairprice Xtra which the children were both very happy to do, thanks to these cute car carts and mini carts!
You do have to sign them out and put down a $10 deposit per cart so it is a bit ley chey but the kids were certainly all smiles, having these to push (and be pushed around in!).
This is our third year doing this so Noey was very familiar with the drill. He got the flyer and read off the items that we needed to buy while we walked the aisles. When we got to the canned food, he got to work checking the cans to see which were halal before selecting some for our carts. He was very focused, unlike Mei who happily put items in our carts with a one-for-them, one-for-me attitude. Heh. We did end up with some extra biscuits but we managed to shop our way down the list of items so I considered it mission accomplished.
Our job wasn’t done though, and since it was running shoes we were after, we made another trip out on another day to Queensway Shopping Centre to pick out some shoes. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a little difficult to pick out something nice for someone we didn’t know at all. Staring at the range of psychedelic and neon coloured shoes, I wondered what this girl whom we were buying them for would like. Mei chose a green pair of Nikes with a pink swoosh — her favourite colours. Noey on the other hand plumped for a rather loud pink and purple Asics pair and tried to insist we get them. I tried to keep the husband’s words in mind and not just go for pink. Not everyone’s as much a pink fan as I am!
In the end, we settled on a “safe” pair of Skechers, in grey with some neon pink trim, that both children agreed with me was nice. We made a simple card and packed it off with love. I hope it brings the recipient some joy this Christmas.
The donation drive is over with all targets reached (yay!) and the wish tree wishes have all been fulfilled, but the Boys Brigade are still welcoming volunteers to help deliver the packed food hampers to the needy. Unfortunately this year it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to get involved with the deliveries but our experience last year left a deep impression and we hope to be back at it again next year. You can read about our experience here, and if you can, do get involved by signing up to help with some deliveries on www.bbshare.sg.
We were glad we were able to do our own small part. Till next year, BB Share-A-Gift!
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