Joy is one of BDCA’s strategic priorities. Over the festive period, our staff and volunteers delivered opportunities for joy through a variety of events to hundreds of local residents! Let’s look back on the festive season to bring us the joy of remembering!

Our annual End of Year Celebration thanked our staff and volunteers for their hard work with a good party and a Turkish buffet!

Our Food and Families team worked hard over the festive period. This included fundraising with Irons for Foodbanks at the London Stadium in Stratford, a Family Hub Christmas celebration attended by over 100 people and our Jollof-y Good Night Fundraiser which raised an incredible £1500 for our Foodbank hampers!

We also had Christmas parties within our Youth Club, WELLbeing Wednesday Meeting Centre, and our ESOL Group (English for Speakers of Other Languages).

This year, our Toy Appeal was able to give out present and hampers to around 200 local children. We wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who was able to donate and to those who attended our fundraising events and shared our appeal on Social Media. A big thank you to Barclays, East Ham for match funding and Cadent for supplying fluffy thermal socks for each hamper.

Excel London came back to us again this year to provide another stellar Christmas Dinner to our Foodbank guests, volunteers and our WELLbeing Wednesday attendees. Our Staff and volunteers adorned their very best Christmas jumpers (and pyjamas) while also celebrating birthdays at the same time!

Our Over 65’s had their annual festive breakfast, where they had an opportunity to have a boogie. Everyone was also provided with beautiful gift bag for all the attendees, donated by the East End Community Foundation.

And lastly, we closed off our festive BDCA celebrations by getting our Over 65’s together and have a meal at the Brewers Fayre in Beckton. A season of joy for all!

Can you help us to keep delivering services to change local lives for the better and transform our community? We need you: become a Friend, gift one-off donation, join as a volunteer, or provide corporate support.