Winter has well and truly arrived here in Kintyre and its definitely been time to put the heating on!
We had the Campbeltown Christmas Lights switch on the 29th of November which was a wonderful event. It is quite the event in the town calendar with a parade of floats, a pipe band and a great festive atmosphere, complete with Father Christmas! We decide to keep the shop open late and sell hot chocolate and flapjack by donation. It was a great evening. We had people in the shop who had never been in before and our second youngest volunteer was delighted to be able to watch all the fun and festivities unfold right outside the shop doorway.
In a further festive twist, one of our volunteers has also shared her secret Christmas Cake recipe which we have printed out and handed to any interested customers, as pretty much all of the ingredients can be purchased in the shop. One of our volunteers also did a delightful job of creating a Christmas window display for our store which is showcased in the article banner. We also hosted a staff and volunteer Christmas Tea in a local hotel over the way from the shop as a well deserved thank you to our team.
In the festive spirit we have also been able to provide support to refugees from Gaza; for the second time, the shop has been able to purchase a month supply of baby formula for Yaqeen, a 5 month old IVF baby born in Gaza who, along with her parents, was forced to flee to Egypt where they are living as refugees with no income. She is dependant on formula milk as her mum was too starved to breast feed. Kintyre Weigh has committed to providing her remaining months of formula and we raise money for this by having a donations jar in the shop as well as selling signed copies of the book ‘Here We Stand: Women Changing The World’, as one of the shop staff wrote one of the chapters in the book.
Speaking of books, the shop has been inundated with secondhand books because the community book cupboard in our village was blown over and destroyed by strong winds. We give these away via a free book box placed on the pavement outside the shop and we have also created a shelf of cookery and gardening books inside the shop which we sell for a donation.
Over the festive season and into the New Year it has been quiet as we closed up some of the time for some annual leave. However, we also made the most of the days we were open, stepping up our fundraising efforts to support Gaza refugee families selling fundraising items during December alongside our usual donation jar.
All sales of the book “Here We Stand: Women changing the world”, which won the Bread and Roses Award when it was published, went to send money to buy formula for baby Yaqeen. She is one of many babies whose mum was too starved to breastfeed her, and whose family is now taking shelter in Cairo. One of our volunteers, who met Yaqeen when she went over to volunteer with refugees in Eygpt, is a contributing author, so signed copies could even be requested as a special gift!
We have also been selling the 2025 Calendar “Sketches from Gaza”, put together by a paramedic artist from her time visiting Gaza, and the profits from this are going to the Palestine Trauma Centre, who are currently holding support groups for children in the rubble as their own centre was destroyed.
Going into a fresh new year, we can only hope that it will bring more peaceful and hopeful days for everyone.
We like to think Kintyre Weigh makes a difference in its own small but determined manner…
