'If you hadn't helped us last year, I don't know where we'd have been'

Last year, WalesOnline ran a Christmas toy appeal for the first time. We worked with a charity in the Rhondda who distribute presents to children who otherwise wouldn't have anything to open on Christmas Day.

You, our brilliant readers, provided more than 800 gifts for children. For some they would have been the only presents they had on Christmas Day. This year, the charity we worked with last year - Canolfan Pentre - are expecting to have even more requests for help this year, so we are asking for help once again.

We know it's hard, particularly at Christmas, but any donation of food, a festive foodie treat, or a toy really will go to help someone who otherwise wouldn't be getting anything this year. The staff at the centre get requests from families, individuals, schools but also social workers or those involved with some of the most desperate families. We want to make sure that anyone who needs a present, will get one.

READ MORE: The WalesOnline Christmas appeal is back for 2024

READ MORE: How to donate to our Christmas appeal

Last year's appeal was our first, but the staff at the charity are clear - without your help - kids would have gone without a present, but also a Christmas dinner. This year, they had their first request for help when the schools went back in September.

"If we'd not had that, we'd have been in Home Bargains, using our own funds," centre manager Rachel said. "It sounds like we're being mean but we're not, without those funds we can't open here and turn the lights on, it's soul destroying. If not, we'd take them all home and buy out of our money because we can't bear the thought of these kids having nothing." You can read all about the appeal here.

We now know that any food or donations we get will either be for sale in the centre's top-up shop, or will be made up into hampers and offered to those who lost everything in Storm Bert.

Buffy Williams, the Rhondda MS who started the charity, said: "It makes you, when you look at your own kids, and you think of everything, it makes you ashamed. In the beginning when we started doing this we only had the parents who were desperate, they didn't want to come, the schools are the same, they didn't want to be seen as not doing as much as they can. That first year Team Around the Family came to me having identified four families they were working with in Pentre, and then there were some teenage mums together living in a block to support each other, that was the first year, eight families.

"The second year it was the last year of Pentre school, so we supported them, and then Treorchy primary and Ton Pentre, and then it just went wild."

This is their eighth year and they have seen the type of people needing help change too, now it is working parents too who are struggling to make ends meet and having to pick between things like food or toiletries, the weekly shop or heating.

This year, we're again beyond thankful to everyone who has donated, including donations from Effective Communication, the WalesOnline team, and you, our brilliant readers.