Record breaking generosity as London Bridge gets a Green Christmas
This year's London Bridge Community Christmas was not only the most successful yet, but also the greenest. A grand total of 2162 presents were donated by local employees from 66 businesses, beating the previous best by some way.
40 businesses based in The Shard produced a mountain of gifts that rivalled the magnitude of the building itself, while the GLA, PwC and Norton Rose Fulbright were our most generous individual sources of donations.
This huge amount of presents gave us a logistical quandary. We decided to make sure that our gift deliveries created zero emissions and, failing snowfall and a herd of reindeer, the excellent PedalMe cargo bike service was the best option. 16 cargo bike trips transported the donated gifts to our London Bridge Hive and then onwards to their final port of call, making sure even Christmas is compliant with our London Bridge Cycle Strategy!
A festive bunch of 48 volunteers braved the Michael Buble marathon to wrap gifts in London Bridge Hive over two days, including large contingents from PwC, Grainger, Kantar TNS, Gowling, and Anthony Gold. Most presents arrived beautifully pre-wrapped to make our task a bit easier.
The team from Hudson Fuggle wrapping in the Hive
The 11 organisations benefitting from London Bridge businesses’ generosity this year are:
The scope of these excellent locally based organisations varies but their wide-range of local participants means that hundreds of Southwark residents who would have had no presents will have something to unwrap on Christmas Day, and many are guaranteed to have company at some stage of the day.
Having reached our gift total target, the extra 781 gifts are going to the Metropolitan Police Christmas Tree Project.
Nadia Broccardo, Executive Director at Team London Bridge said, “Year after year we are astounded by the generosity of our businesses. London Bridge might be in the heart of our city but has a close-knit community that sincerely cares and looks out for its neighbours, not just at Christmas time, but throughout the year via our Responsible Business programme. This amazing amount of gifts will bring festive joy to many for whom Christmas can be a lonely, challenging time."
Team London Bridge would like to offer heartfelt thanks everyone involved and wish all of our participants, friends and members a Merry Christmas and a very happy 2019.