It's Fun To Buy Christmas Cards At The YMCA!

And you can feel good knowing ALL of the proceeds go to charity

For the 22nd consecutive year, the Ealing Charity Christmas Card Shop is setting up stall at the YMCA on St. Mary's Road, South Ealing.

The Ealing shop is one of the very few charity card outlets in London where 100 per cent of the money raised goes directly to the charities, due to the efforts of the 70 volunteers involved in the running of the shop.

Last year £36,600 was raised for 36 different charities.  This brought the total raised since 1986 to more than £500,000.

The main charities include: Save the Children, NSPCC, Royal National Lifeboats Institution, Unicef, Samaritans, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Mencap, Leukaemia Research, Age Concern, Shelter, Amnesty International, National Eczema Society, Christian Aid, Royal Marsden Hospital as well as local charities such as Hammersmith Hospital Kidney Patients, Central Middlesex Myositis Support Group, Shooting Star Hospice.

The opening hours are 10.00 to 5.30 Mondays to Saturdays. We will also be open on Sundays from 25th November until 16th December from 12 to 4.30. The shop will close on Wednesday, 19th December.

The YMCA kindly lend the card shop a room for the eight weeks when the shop is open but, apart from that, the shop is entirely independent from the YMCA and the volunteers are not members of the YMCA.

"All the charities who sell their cards in the shop are expected to provide at least one volunteer.said one of the organisers Carolyn Noble.  "Twenty two years ago when the shop first opened we had 40 volunteers, many of them friends of the people who started the shop (Sue Green and the late Pat Harvey). Over the years, many of our volunteers have recruited their friends, regular customers have asked to help and people who are no longer connected to a charity have asked if they could carry on helping out." 

The shifts are only two and a half hours long, there is a cafe on the premises and the atmosphere in the shop is very friendly.  If anyone is interested in volunteering please contact Sue Green on 8567 0367.

November 13, 2007