'Donate to make children's Christmas wishes come true'
A community group is urging the public to donate money to help underprivileged children fulfil their Christmas wishes, saying it has only raised less than half of its fundraising goal this year. The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) has been organising a Christmas gift programme for underprivileged children since 2004 and it has handed out about 40,000 gifts in total. This year, 3,360 applications were received. SoCO's deputy director, Sze Lai Shan, said that these children come from low-income families and many live in subdivided flats. “Christmas is a time to love and it is a happy time for the children, but for those underprivileged children, it’s not easy for them to celebrate or have Christmas gifts,” Sze said. She added that the children's Christmas wishes are mostly for everyday items, such as school shoes, sneakers, dictionaries, calculators, and book vouchers. Some children also asked for toy cars, robots, vacuum cleaners, rice cookers, and kettles. One of the children, 10-year-old Zilina, asked for a table tennis racket. She said that her old one was broken and she wanted to use a new racket to represent her school at an inter-school competition. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Huang said that she chose a book voucher because she wanted to buy some novels. She said that her mother is a single parent who takes care of her and her sister and that she rarely receives gifts. Sze said that each gift costs about HK$250, which brings the total cost of the gifts to an estimated HK$750,000. So far, the group has raised only HK$360,000 this year. “A donation of HK$250 can help one child,” she said. “But we welcome any amount, even if they donate HK$100, we can combine a few of them to give one gift.”