New mum raises £23k to help ‘save Christmas’

A Dungannon mum, who had her third child just four weeks ago, has raised £23,000 in one week to help ensure no child in Northern Ireland is left without a gift this Christmas.
By The Newsroom
Published 23rd Dec 2019, 10:10 BST
Updated 24th Dec 2019, 01:12 BST
Caroline O’Neill, owner of DIGG Childrenswear in Dungannon is pictured with her four-week old daughter, Tess, after she demonstrated the goodwill of social media when she raised £23k in one week to help ensure no child in Northern Ireland is left without a gift this Christmas. Caroline put out a plea to the 10,000 followers on her Instagram page to help her raise money for Cash for Kids and the overwhelming response meant she has been able to buy thousands of presents for children who otherwise might not get a gift this Christmas.Caroline O’Neill, owner of DIGG Childrenswear in Dungannon is pictured with her four-week old daughter, Tess, after she demonstrated the goodwill of social media when she raised £23k in one week to help ensure no child in Northern Ireland is left without a gift this Christmas. Caroline put out a plea to the 10,000 followers on her Instagram page to help her raise money for Cash for Kids and the overwhelming response meant she has been able to buy thousands of presents for children who otherwise might not get a gift this Christmas.
Caroline O’Neill, owner of DIGG Childrenswear in Dungannon is pictured with her four-week old daughter, Tess, after she demonstrated the goodwill of social media when she raised £23k in one week to help ensure no child in Northern Ireland is left without a gift this Christmas. Caroline put out a plea to the 10,000 followers on her Instagram page to help her raise money for Cash for Kids and the overwhelming response meant she has been able to buy thousands of presents for children who otherwise might not get a gift this Christmas.

Caroline O’Neill put out a plea to the 10,000 followers on her Instagram page to help her collect as many gifts as possible for Cash for Kids.

The DIGG Childrenswear owner said: “I noticed that the Mission Christmas box we had in DIGG Childrenswear didn’t have as many gifts as previous years, so I turned to my social media to encourage my followers to drop in a gift.

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“I know that a lot of people are short on time over the busy festive season, so I set up a fundraising link for people to donate and said I would then use it to buy gifts on their behalf.

“I thought that if I could raise £500, it would help make a difference to some children who otherwise might not get a gift this Christmas – the thought of this just breaks my heart.”

She said the response from customers and online followers was “completely overwhelming”. In just three days £20,000 had been raised and the overall total after one week was £23,000.

She continued: “In addition to this thousands of gifts have also been donated. I knew it would take more than just me to purchase the amount of presents that this mind-blowing amount of money would be able to get, so I reached out to some of the social influencers and bloggers across Northern Ireland who had shared my posts asking people to donate.

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“I spoke to Cash for Kids and they said the age groups they were most lacking gifts for was 0-18 months and teenagers aged from 14-18 so these were the ages we concentrated on.

“In addition to buying as many gifts as possible, we also wanted to spend the money in towns across the Province and support local retailers.”

Presents were purchased from town and cities across Northern Ireland including Ballymena, Armagh, Portadown, Magherafelt, Omagh, Lisburn, Saintfield, Downpatrick, Dungannon, Cookstown, Tyrone and Belfast.

Caroline said: “I cannot even begin to describe the support we have received over the last number of days from the business community right across Northern Ireland who very kindly offered us great discounts and even provided additional gifts, for which I am hugely grateful. I would also like to extend my thanks to the amazing team of social influencers who gave up their time to purchase the gifts and to help make sure children have a present to open on Christmas morning.”

Due to the volume of gifts purchased Caroline secured a warehouse to store them before transferring them to Cash for Kids for the team to begin distributing the presents to children across NI.

Related topics:Northern IrelandInstagramDownpatrick