Inspire Middleton runs the Lighthouse Project, Middleton Central Foodbank, Lighthouse Money Advice and Lighthouse Pantry, and all of these projects have been supporting local people during the challenging times of the last year.

Sadly the scale of need is not reducing. Here are some examples of the need and demands for help we have met in the last 12 months.

- Middleton Central Foodbank gave away 29 tonnes of emergency food between Oct23/Sept24 equivalent to 69,625 meals for people needing emergency support. This included 717 different families, of 2,929 adults and children

- The Lighthouse Money Advice debt service has been helping our community deal with over £1.05 million of personal debt, and between Oct23/Sept24 helped 720 clients ease their debts by over £380,000. We also helped people achieve an increase in benefits, or reduction of expenditure in the order of £449,000.

- The Lighthouse Pantry supported 358 different families between Oct23/Sept24 through 4898 Pantry attendances, providing savings of up to £1,000 on their annual food costs leaving more money available for other household bills. Collectively our members take away over 1500 food items each week, which is a lot of food to source.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, but for many families it can be a difficult time with the extra costs and worries that Christmas brings, especially for families with children. We need your support in helping us to reduce those burdens which is why we are appealing for donations to this campaign. The families we support usually have a direct connection to our work, or one of the community organisations that we work with.

Your donation will directly help a child in need, and all children and families will have been referred to us through local support services, a local school, or our own projects.

In addition to the gifts of toys that we receive your donations will be used to purchase targeted toys, games or gift vouchers for children aged between 0-16 years so that no-one misses out or feels second best.

We know that all donations are appreciated especially where a child may have requested a particular toy that has not been physically donated.

Thank you for supporting our community, and helping us ensure that fewer children in Middleton will be without Christmas presents this year.