A special delivery from one local group

When £700 was donated to our group from local arts organisation Allegri and McPhillip’s School of Speech and Drama and a further £200 from my own family, I instantly began to wonder about what I could put the money towards during these challenging times. I wanted to use this money for something to benefit our kids and their families. I’d seen various youth groups out delivering things like fruit, snacks and colouring books to kids so I thought that it was a good idea to do something along those lines, except make them extra special.

I had a clear vision for the bags, I wanted them to be fun and practical. As our group varies in ages (5 months to 15 years old, including siblings). After a few happy hours of shopping and a couple of trips to various local supermarkets, the bags were ready to go. Each bag was tailored to an individual child and was age appropriate. As our deaf children have sensory issues, I tried to include a sensory toy in each of their bags – things like fidget balls, stress balls, visual calming toys and textured calming toys. I also wanted to include a book in each bag, most of these books featured a deaf character so that the kids could feel a sense of connection with the story. For primary school-aged children I may have also included a comprehension book (sorry kids!).

I filled up the bags with other goodies like DVDs, bubbles, colouring books, stickers, toys, skipping ropes and some treats to eat (including fruit). The bags were colourful with each child’s name on them. Siblings also got a personalised bag filled with similar age appropriate goodies. My house looked like a toy shop for about a week!

Once all of the bags were ready and I had a day off work, me and my helpers, Jacob (aged 7 and deaf) and Erin (aged 8 and hearing), set to work. With a quick stop to buy flowers and chocolate for all of the hard working parents we set off on an eight hour adventure. This was the part that I loved the most, being able to touch base with our parents face-to-face (socially distanced of course), find out how they were coping during lockdown and assure them that the group is here for them if they need anything. Our group covers a large geographical area so a lot of our families are rural and therefore would be more isolated than those of us that live in towns and cities. Me and the treasurer Michelle were able to hand deliver these bags and it was a real joy to spend time with our members.

We also decided to pay it forward and made a donation of bags to an assisted living facility in Derry for profoundly deaf adults who have other complex needs. Their bags were a little different with PJs, hand cream, chocolate and they had a takeaway dinner on us as well. I feel that in these unprecedented times we all need and deserve to be looked after and I just hope that this mini project of ours spread a little bit of happiness.