A Christmas delivery from Gibraltar to Ghana

Some children in Ghana will experience receiving Christmas presents for the first time this year thanks to donations from Gibraltar’s residents to HelpMeLearnAfrica.

Over 700 shoe boxes stuffed with gifts have been collected, wrapped and departed the Rock for Ghana today.

Louise Barea from the charity explained that earlier this year Gianna Parody, who had organised a Christmas shoe box appeal last year for a UK based charity, contacted her whilst she was in Ghana and asked if she thought it was possible to do it this year for HelpMeLearnAfrica.

“I was ecstatic and agreed, and immediately started planning and adjusting the check list for Ghana,” she said.

“This is because last year the list had items such as scarfs, hats candles, which will not benefit the kids in Ghana. So I modified it, and also asked Gianna if each person could add a Christmas card or note inside each box to make it more personal.”

Ms Parody agreed and created a group on Facebook which received immediate responses. Over a period of four weeks there were pickups from the Queensway carpark and from all the schools on the Rock.

“The response was insane!! Over 700 boxes have been collected,” said Ms Barea.

“We asked for £5 for each box to cover delivery costs from Gib-London-Accra and then once in Accra the GFA has offered to pay the transportation costs from Accra to the school.”

Ms Barea credits Ms Parody with everything calling her amazing for all the work she had done over the month.

“Now all I need to do is plan the delivery, to make sure all arrives well at the village. That each kid gets a present and that all my workers in Ghana have everything under control to make sure things don’t get out of hand,” she said.

“I am hoping to fly to Ghana for a few days to see this as I can’t think of anything more exciting but because of UK lockdown I’m not sure I will be able to.”

“Either way we will be recording the whole process of the shoe boxes to make sure Gibraltar sees how amazing and charitable is it and that they will give children in Ghana their first ever Christmas!” she added.