Helping London’s homeless over Christmas

The rate of homeless people raised 18% between 2018 to 2019 in London. Last year, the number of homeless people hit the record high with about 8,855 people sleep on streets in capital. Moreover, hundreds of people sleep on London’s night buses. In the past 10 years, the rough-sleeping figures have always been increasing. This issue is also called as “national disgrace” by Sadiq Khan who are the mayor of London.

Varieties of charity shelters and volunteers in London thoughts lots of ways to prepare a nice and warm Christmas for those homeless people. Sadiq Khan helped serve 100 Christmas dinners to guests at London’s City Hall. Not only dinner, City Hall also afford free services such as hairdressers, karaoke, art workshops for homeless people. During Christmas time, places like churches, city hall, libraries, shops, and railway stations opened their doors for homeless people this year. In Londonderry, there are around 100 volunteers sacrificed their own time to serve homeless people in Claude’s cafe. This is mainly for people who would be spend their Christmas alone.

Different Churches in London contribute a lot to help homeless people. Inn Churches paid about 15 homeless people to have Christmas in a bed and they can eat free breakfast in Bradford. St Matthews church, at Willesden paid a part of people three days free breakfast and afforded them bed to sleep over nights. There has a winter shelter scheme which formed by nineteen Churches inside and outside of London. The winter shelter scheme provided homeless people with beds to spend nights and meals. It lasted for a whole week. Volunteers made roast turkeys, vegetables, and pigs for those people in Christmas Day. And there is a chip shop in Whale served free fish and chips to the homeless.

Donation would be another way of helping homeless people. People with warm hearted would donate their unwanted coat to charity shelters, these winter clothes may is no longer you want, however, for them they will be useful. Thomas Blundell organised a big event this Christmas. Three colleges ( Westminster Kingsway College, City College and Islington College) in Capital city formed as a donation team. Victoria centre, King’s cross centre, Soho centre and Regent’s park centre are all including in this event. Students and staffs all collected and donated warm winter clothes for homeless people. The purpose of this event is just offering more support to people who needs real help in lives. Students from these colleges also call on others to donate some clothes which they don’t want. If London college of communication can learn from it and organise a donation event next year that will be great. Helping others is always good.

There is a online shop company called Unhoused.org and they announced themselves as “UK’s first online shop for homeless supplies.” When people buy basic clothing supplies from their shop, the money will donate to charities. Or people can just buy basic clothing supplies for homeless people and these items will go to charity shelters. So this is also a simple way of helping homeless people. The online shop is very successful, the spokesman said they donated around 500,000 items to homeless centres.

Spice girl Mel C as a well-known singer took part in fundraising event which was the Sleep Walk for shelters last year. ( people walk 10km at night in central London) This year, Fara Williams( football player) and Monty Panesar (cricketer) also took part in Sleep Walk event. A big part of people and children were facing strict living problems and the event would get more attention from the pubic especially when well-knowns also join the event. (https://england.shelter.org.uk/support_us/events/charity_challenge )This is the link for people who are interested in the event, feel free to sign up and join the big group.

Almost every single homeless people would have the feeling of lonely and of been isolated from the world. Due to they don’t have a home that belong to themselves and need to sleep on the streets at night. A warm chat or a hug from strangers could also save a person from darkness. If you are not wealthy enough to support them by giving money, one word of concern may would make them feel they are not lonely or isolated from other ones.

Christmas can also be a hard time for both homeless people and their pets. It’s common to see that people who has no where to go but has a dog around him/her. They see their pets as a family member just as important as their own. Charities not only shout for helping homeless people but also giving some goods to their pets. (https://www.crisis.org.uk/get-involved/crisis-mayhew-gifts-end-homelessness/ ) This is the link for people who want to donate some money to their pets. Pets also feel coldness in winter, they are best friends to these homeless people, so helping their pets is a way of helping them.