"There’s more joy in giving than receiving"

Thursday 24 December 2020

Two neighbours from St. Brelade have brought the community together by organising a reverse advent calendar in a bid to create hampers for islanders in need this Christmas.

Sharon Cox and Ana Jouault worked over the festive period to create 36 hampers of food and essentials to be distributed to those in need over the Christmas period.

Their initiative was inspired by the idea of a ‘reverse advent calendar', which sees individuals buy something each day of December, which then they collect in a hamper on Christmas Eve.

After hearing about the concept online, Sharon and Ana, who calls herself Sharon’s “little elf,” began working together to collect food to create hampers for the Grace Trust, a charity for Jersey’s most vulnerable.

Pictured: Sharon and Ana put together 36 hampers in total.

However, they made sure to collect the items earlier than Christmas Eve so that local families would get their hampers on time for the festivities. The donations ranged from essentials like pasta and tinned food, to Christmassy treats and vouchers for market fruit and veg stalls, ensuring not only fresh food was included but also support for local businesses.

When she posted her plans on St. Brelade’s parish site, Sharon soon found her idea spreading round the community at a pace, with word getting out amongst friends, family and across the island. They had expected enough for around 15 hampers max - they ended up with over double.

Even her friends’ grandchildren got involved. Sharon noted that it provided a good lesson in how poverty is far closer to home than they might think: “it showed that it wasn’t being sent overseas, there were people in the island who needed help.”

On why she picked the Grace Trust, Sharon explained: “The reason we went down that route is because they’re quite a small charity but I know they work very hard and help everybody they can, and not just in one area of the community.

“They help with families with food parcels, help giving time just to put the kettle on and chat to people who need reassurance… they’re good guys, they understand people.”

Indeed, the extent of the charity’s work this year was reinforced when she was given a thank you letter from the Grace Trust: “I had a lovely letter after they’d had the parcels the week after – they actually said that normally they have about 110 families they were helping, whereas this year they had about 300, which really brings it home.”

Pictured: Sharon and Ana are looking to get even more of the island involved for their next mission.

Sharon isn’t planning to stop at the last window of the calendar either, and is looking ahead to next year for what will hopefully be a bigger, more island wide event, and perhaps even an Easter version of it.

She added that she’d like to see other parishes run their own initiatives. This would not only enable more people can get involved across the island, but also prevent her house from becoming entirely packed - “at one point my house looked like Santa’s grotto!” she mused.

Concluding what she has got from the experience, Sharon said that “it sounds cheesy but it’s true – there’s more joy in giving than receiving, and this has definitely made me think it’s the case.

“It’s been something that’s brought our community closer together.”