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IS Oxford Christmas Giving 2017

Every member of staff has been given £200 to spend at Good Gifts! See our choices here

It is the fourteenth year that IS Oxford have donated to charity through the Good Gifts Catalogue.

Our annual order always consists of our own personal choices together with the supply of a school library in a poor neighbourhood in India. Our donation will establish the library, including a termite roof, and supply cupboards and books. In addition this year we have chosen to refresh three established libraries with one hundred books in each.

Our individual choices covered 45 different gifts. A new one this year is to supply a backpack to chemotherapy patients to enable them to move around whilst having treatment and not have to be confined to a hospital room. Another is an ingenious device to warn dolphins, porpoises, seals and even sharks in UK waters to move away from fishing nets and so help with the diminishing numbers off of our shores.

In Africa we chose to de-worm 1000 children, to train a nurse for one year and a nursing assistant for one year and supplied six health workers giving pregnant mothers in rural Africa help during childbirth.

In the developing world we have given the gift of sight to twenty which gives the recipients an unmeasurable amount of joy and we have also transformed the life of a child in Ethiopia with a cleft lip and palate operation.

Across Africa clean water is at a premium and low tech solutions are available so we have supplied a treadle pump which is person-powered and offers a cheap low-maintenance solution to drawing water, we have also supplied a water tank which can collect whatever rain water there is.

On the theme of education we supplied a year’s schooling for five children in Africa and girl-friendly schooling for five girls in South Sudan.

In the UK we chose to help regenerate four bluebell woods and three areas of meadowland, which creates a playground for bees and butterflies. We purchased twelve square metres of greenbelt land to preserve the urban creep and planted 25 meters of hedgerow. We also planted ten trees (beech trees which help with carbon and sulphur dioxide and alder trees which help combat local flooding). To help the elderly in the UK we have also supplied three Christmas hampers, two cats and two dogs for comfort. We have also supplied the care for three abandoned pets and respite to one family with a disabled child suppling them with a special babysitter for an hour.

This is a selection of our choices and as always our order was very much appreciated by the Good Gifts staff.