As a community focused charity, our mission is to champion and add value to young lives at every opportunity. In December, kind-hearted individuals, organisations and local businesses helped children at Southampton’s YMCA nurseries to have a fantastic Christmas with a huge amount of toy donations that were generously donated by members of the public through Wave 105’s annual Mission Christmas appeal. 

It may surprise you to know that over 88,000 children in the South go to bed in the evening without a hot meal, or are living in a house without central heating. For these families, Christmas is a luxury they just cannot afford. Many families can find Christmas a very difficult time and our YMCA nursery teams work hard to support and bring joy and happiness to them.

Wave 105 Cash for Kids supports local children, under the age of 18 who are financially, socially, emotionally or physically disadvantaged. Since its launch in November 2008, the charity has helped to raise over four million two hundred and forty-five thousand pounds. Every year Wave 105 Cash for Kids runs its ‘Mission Christmas’ campaign, to ensure that presents are given to children and teenagers living in poverty in the South. Last year listeners, charity supporters and businesses donated presents in November and December. These presents were sorted and collated by volunteers and then collected by charities such as ourselves.

To offer further support of the Wave 105 community campaign, the YMCA Fairthorne Group, offered the community space of Weston Library as a gift donation drop off point and was delighted to collect around 90 gifts to contribute to the campaign. Regular library users were pleased to support the appeal and spread the message within the Weston area of Southampton.