‘Did you know that 41% of all children are living in poverty in our local area alone? Every donation we receive finds a loving home with a local child that would otherwise go without this winter.’

It’s a Wrap are a wonderful not-for-profit organisation that make sure that all of the children in Hounslow receive a Christmas present, even if they come from a disadvantaged background. GoodGym Hounslow have helped out It’s a Wrap on their Christmas missions before in years past, and we had a task a few weeks back where we wrote out tags and cards for presents.

This time though, it was time to get the gifts dressed up and ready for delivery. Four of us braved the chilly December morning and met at the Access Self Storage centre in Isleworth - or today, the Elf Storage centre! We met up with one of the charity team, who led up to our spot for the day. Covid had been cruel, and we were squeezed into a corner. But hey, we had our tape, our paper, our gifts and our labels, plus our enthusiasm and good will, and we parked ourselves into the floor and got stuck in (literally, that tape was a nightmare).

Just like the Waitresses in that famous festive song, we got Christmas Wrapping. We tried several different combinations to find what was most effective - was it doing it all individually, or was a present production line more efficient? Michelle took the gifts and cut wrapping paper to the right size for Dilly and Alanna to wrap. Lucy wrote the labels out and stuck them on - some of the presents were gifted from donors and have lovely messages on from members of the public or other organisations.

We swapped roles at times (mainly because Michelle was terrible at making sure the paper she cut was big enough to cover the whole present), and before long we had worked our way through all the gifts for the bambino’s, and onto the 3-5 year olds. We were then given a task of preparing presents for a group of young refugee children. There was a mixture of boys and girls of all ages, so we had to search the present donations for suitable things - books for the babies, connect four, a secret diary and one 6-8 year old girl was about to get the most fantastic set of Sparkle Girlz dolls.

Like proper little festive elves, we had filled bags of professional wrapped gifts. Unfortunately, we discovered the self storage unit on a December morning wasn’t really a present wrapping location. The doors opened and closed for lorries, which was noisy and cold, and it’s really not easy to use scissors or a pen when you can’t feel your fingers. Nonetheless, we did over two hours on the floor! Safe in the knowledge that hundreds of children would get something wrapped by us this Christmas, we finished up. We were thanked with celebrations and left on a hunt for hot drinks and warmer climates.

Mission complete… It’s a Wrap!