Christmas Dinners 2020

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We don’t usually hear our wonderful Christmas Dinners teams talking about or planning their dinners until September each year. And we don’t usually get in touch to offer any support until then either. But 2020 has been a bit different. Everyone has experienced many challenges in these unprecedented times.  So we’ve thought that it might be useful to bring together the experience and enthusiasm of the dinners teams to start a conversation about the dinners this year; what are your thoughts, Read more [...]

Don’t forget the film. Merry Christmas to all the Christmas Dinners in 2019

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https://youtu.be/-m6jQUQj7Ys The Christmas dinners are organised by independent steering groups around the country. There are  seven areas of organisation which make up the dinner for Christmas day . They are transport, guests, volunteers, venue, food, presents and the steering group.   One or two people take responsibility for each of the seven areas. They began meeting in October. The dedicated groups then meet every two weeks up to Christmas to feed in ideas and help each other. They call Read more [...]

The Gold From The Stone Foundation

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The Lemn Sissay Foundation! The what? The Lemn Sissay Foundation! “Who the heck does he think he is?”. When a group of friends respectfully asked to set up a foundation in my name to raise and give money to the Christmas dinners, flattery trumped common sense and I said yes But after a little time I realised it was wrong. If I was dead then it would make sense, but I'm alive.  So I put it to the trustees that I wanted the name changed. That was a year ago. I’ve not been able to mention Read more [...]

Christmas Dinner Teams Light up Autumn.

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As the dark nights draw closer  Christmas Dinner steering groups  are lighting up throughout the country. The Richmond team have met  twice already   The Leeds team held a fundraiser black tie dinner. They raised  £8,000 for Leeds. Last night I visited the first Wigan Christmas Dinner meeting. I hear Barnsley are up and running for the first time this year. The Manchester Christmas Dinner facebook Group page have over 250 members. I spoke to Canterbur. They Read more [...]