Toys, Tucker, and your youth group

How you can help make Christmas a happier time for people in need.

What does your Christmas look like?

For many of us, waking up on Christmas morning is an exciting time. Christmas day is spent with family and friends creating special memories. It is also most importantly spent reflecting on Christ and celebrating his birth, death and resurrection which gives us the hope of eternal life.

However, many people are in need at Christmas time, often because something has occurred in their life either right before Christmas or during the year. As Christmas approaches, they are in a difficult financial situation where they can’t provide what is seen as a ‘normal’ Christmas for their family and one that many of us take for granted.

For a parent in this situation it is hard for them not to be able to offer a gift or something special for Christmas lunch for their child and family. It can be heartbreaking for the parents to think that their child will wake up to no gift or special Christmas lunch on Christmas day.

How can your youth group help?

There are a number of great charity activities that help people around Christmas. One of them is Anglicare's 'Toys ‘n’ Tucker', an annual initiative which provides food and gifts for those who need it. It is run during November with participants including churches, youth groups, schools and businesses from throughout the greater Sydney and Illawarra areas.

Toys ‘n’ Tucker is a great way to engage your youth group to show Christ’s love in a practical way to those people in need within our communities. All the donations from your youth group are then collected by Anglicare, and taken to their warehouse where they are sorted and packed before being sent out for distribution to individual families.

Games & Activities

A fun way to involve your youth group in Toys 'n' Tucker, is by running a games night. Here's an example of some of the games you can play:

Cook like a MasterChef

Divide your group up into teams. Using cans of baked beans, spaghetti, 2-minute noodles and other ingredients commonly donated during food drives, teams must prepare a delicious (and normal!) Christmas meal for the selected judges. See which team can make the most mouth-watering meal from their items. This game helps people realise that while all donations are helpful, it's great to donate things that you really like to eat, and not just the basics!

Merry Xmas

Give each member of your group a piece of paper and pen. Give everyone 10- 20mins (depending on the group size) to go around the room and ask 5 people their favourite thing about Christmas or what Christmas day involves for them. Then come back together as a larger group and ask a few people to share what they wrote down. This is a good opportunity to lead into thinking about families in our communities who don’t look forward to Christmas like most of us do. Think about the difference you can make in people’s lives by giving awesome gifts and food!