A Maltese charity initiative dedicated to giving gifts to children from families with social problems or from children’s homes has been left without hundreds of presents after many people who promised to buy the children’s gifts failed to materialise by this weekend’s deadline.

Children’s Dreams wants to help the parents of these children make their Christmas dreams come true, as they have done for the past four years. 

However this year, over 750 children will not have their dreams fulfilled after the people who pledged to deliver their gifts didn’t show up, and now the charity is extending its deadline and publicly calling for anyone who pledged a gift to these children to deliver. 

“This year we had 2,114 pledges such as toys, clothes, bicycles, and books, but so far we have only received 1,364 gifts,” said Remenda Grech, Operations Manager at Children’s Dreams and a social worker, to Lovin Malta. 

The charity works by people going onto the Children’s Dreams website, seeing a list of children and the gift they hope for, and pledging to get them the gift. It doesn’t need to be a new gift, and can be anything from an extra bike to unused toy.

“We are still waiting for 750 ‘dreams’ that were pledged by the public but were not delivered to our offices upon the deadline, which was last Saturday. In fact, we have now extended the deadline till today and our offices will be open till 7pm,” she said.

With just hours to go before the deadline ends, Remenda is worried that there may be hundreds of Maltese children who will not have their Christmas dreams fulfilled. 

“These children were let down so many times in their lives, let’s unite and show them solidarity. Let’s show them we believe in them, we stand by them and for them,” she said. 

She hopes that everyone who pledged a gift will “follow their promise and help us give an enchanted Christmas to these children. I’d also like to thank all those who are showing their solidarity, they give us social workers the courage to keep on with our work,” she said.

The unfulfilled pledges will be re-uploaded on Tuesday in the hopes of fulfilling the undelivered gifts. 

When asked why she thought the gifts weren’t delivered in time, Remenda said that maybe “they did not realise that presents have to be delivered by a deadline. The thing is we still have to sort them upon delivery, hand them to a social worker and then the social worker hands them to minors, thus a long process remains after delivery of present by sponsor. Hence why the deadline was Saturday.”

If you would like to help Children’s Dreams give Maltese children a better Christmas, head to www.childrendreams.org where they will be re-uploading the undelivered gifts on Tuesday. 

You can also send a donation at: Appogg Children’s Dreams(HSBC): 023 175730 005

 Your details will only be provided to the social worker who would then get in touch with you by email or telephone. Confidentiality will be respected to protect all persons concerned. The gift is to be taken to the Children’s Dreams Office, Hal Farrug, Luqa. Then Social Workers will be passing the gift to the parents/carers of the child to be given at Christmas.

Will you help a child receive a gift this Christmas?

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Johnathan Cilia

Johnathan is an award-winning Maltese journalist interested in social justice, politics, minority issues, music and food. Follow him at @supreofficialmt on Instagram, and send him news, food and music stories at [email protected]