In December 2020, Community Media organisation Elastic FM pioneered a way of helping local families and children at Christmas. Their creative initiative saw local people choosing to put together a Christmas Hamper and then delivering it to a family in need.

To orchestrate this campaign, Elastic FM set up a Facebook Group called Christmas Cheer. Inside this group, the Elastic FM team explained the Covid-19 safety considerations for putting together the hamper. This included some guidance on what type of products to put inside the hamper.  

The initiative has received good support from kind local people, with almost 30 people putting gift hampers darwin together and delivering them to local families and schools.

To support the initiative, Elastic FM ran a social media campaign to find the local families who needed a hamper. Commenting on the initiative, Elastic FM Chairman, David Lilley, said,

“Elastic FM had operated an event called Christmas Cheer for the previous 4 years. This saw 50 local elderly people being treated to an afternoon of festivities, food, drink, food and entertainment, culminating in the award of a shoebox full of Christmas gifts. The situation with Covid-19 meant we could not have elderly people in a room in December 2020 and so we decided to switch the method of helping people. The new campaign allowed the kind givers of the Christmas Hampers to personally see the response from the family who benefited from their kindness”    

If anyone would like to join the initiative for Christmas 2021, they can join the Facebook Group by clicking here