A Personal Plea for Christmas 2009

Give A Little Love 2009

How Give A Little Love Began

A few years back i recall getting involved with a similar campaign to the Give a Little Love cause. I donated some gifts, packed them and decorated them. Then I was asked with Smita to go and deliver these gifts. That day changed my life forever. I recall knocking on the door of a rather large building, and after a few seconds a lady aged in her thirties, but who looked nearer fifty, answered the door hesitantly. We told her we had some Christmas gifts for her and her family.

She looked at us in a mistrusting manner, and she started to question us. But after some questionning we managed to get inside and give her the gifts we had collected. As we entered, two young children, aged under 4 came running up to us, excited with the prospect of getting some Christmas gifts. The smile of the little boy seeing these gifts is firmly etched in my memories five years on. The lady then started to break into tears too, in disbelief over our visit. This did not happen in Kabul, or Mumbai, but right here in North London. We found out later that she and her children were in hiding from her abusive and violent partner.

Rather than just financially contributing to others less fortunate, I learnt that day that getting physically and emotionally involved can provide some of life's most valuable and humbling experiences.

Problems Right Here On Our Doorstep

Quite often or not, we think of the many problems all across the world, but more often or not, just around the corner in our big cities and towns, there are many people, including children who are having a real tough time of it.

This one event in my life 5 years back inspired us to set up the Give a Little Love Campaign in 2008, and now in 2009 we need your help even more to help other children right here in our local areas.

How to Get Involved

You can get either get involved by sending us gifts in, or even better, inspire your team and get your patients and contacts to give gifts to you, and then you can distribute them to your local community or alternatively send them to us, and we will find a home for them. Last year, this was a brilliant team bonding experience for the Samera team and I would strongly encourage others to get their teams involved, as it brought some great team spirit to the team.

Delivery date is the 23rd December 2009, and you are all more than welcome to come and join us to wrap, deliver and have some fun on the day!

Just keep us informed of your activities so we know how things are going if you are raising gifts at your own practice. You can email us on givealittlelove2009@gmail.com or just drop me an email and i will get the necessary done!

To find out more and get involved please visit www.givealittlelove.org.uk

Can you make a difference?

Of course you can. It won't be the amount of money or the number of cars or houses that will ultimately matter when you are on your deathbed. It will be the number of people you have touched and helped.

Just the other day I learnt of someone who is a friend of a friend who just spent £22,000 on a handbag (yes a handbag, can you believe it!!!!), i doubt they will get real satisfaction from that handbag, however, that huge amount of money would have bought 1100 gifts alone...putting smiles on loads of kids faces, something that is priceless. Lets together inspire our future generations and do something amazing this Christmas! Please help us to help others less fortunate than us this Christmas in our own local communities.

I look forward to you joining us to make this a very special campaign. Many thanks and have a fantastic week ahead!

Arun