Christmas is a testing time of year for most families whether it is emotionally, physically or financially. However one person through his own company and the help of his team are doing their best to help every day financially challenged families get through the festive period.
The youngest of four children living on a council estate on the fringes of South London, Darren Greenaway may feel he had a bit of a challenging upbringing. It seemed most of the time the family was seeing his father who was a heavy drinker, either squandering what little money there was or gambling it on horses. This meant most of his childhood was hiding from people who wanted to be paid like the milkman, going without meals or generally struggling from one day to another. However despite this, his mother somehow always managed to achieve two very admirable things. A family holiday each year and a Christmas where each child received a present and Christmas meal.
Now as an adult and thankful for what he has achieved, Darren wanted to help the community. In 2012 he decided to set up the Greenaway Residential Foundation, the charitable side of his estate agency firm, with two sole aims. Firstly to provide ad hoc help to financially challenged families, who seem to fly under the radar of formal help like benefits and secondly to do good in the world until there is enough good in the world.
Although the Foundation does charitable work throughout the year, their big effort is focused on Christmas. As estate agency during December is pretty quiet, Darren decided one of the ways he could help people, was to provide families everything they need to cook a full two course Christmas dinner. Using his mother’s values this was put into practice and working with local schools and council organisations to nominate families who they felt would benefit from such support. In the first year Darren and the team achieved just five meals, however six years later a total 247 family meals will be delivered.
In the early years of delivering the meals, it was noted how the children often still had few presents, so in 2017 the Wishing Tree was launched. Wherever possible children from the nominated families could pop into either of the Greenaway Residential Estate Agents offices in Crawley or East Grinstead, take a ‘snow flake’ off a tree and make a wish for a present. Like many adults Darren has a memory as a child looking through catalogues wishfully looking at toys, so he wanted to recreate the same memories for children and their parents. So to help them think of presents, families can go to a private office and look for a present the children would like to receive, thus trying to create a family moment that everyone can enjoy.
Once a present has been wished for, the Greenaway Residential Foundation approaches the local community to see if anyone or a business would like to sponsor a child’s wish. In the first year 52 wishes fulfilled, now in the second year an amazing 302 wishes will be given.
We are not sure if the team live up to the levels achieved each year by Santa Clause, but year on year the Greenaway Residential Foundation will continue to spread the Christmas spirit through the community with the help of the community.
Greenaway Residential Foundation helps financially challenged families with ad hoc help to get them through a tough time. Do good in the world, until there is enough good in the world.