Children ask for 'heartbreaking' wishes for Dunelm's Delivering Joy

Following on from the annual 'Delivering Joy' campaign at Christmastime, St Helens Dunelm is one of the stores trialling it as a summer campaign to help more families during the ongoing cost of living crisis.

Whereas requests of what customers and organisations would like were left under the tree at Christmastime, the project follows the same idea but sees requests dropped in drawstring bags in the St Helens Retail Park store.

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Staff members were blown away by the response in St Helens over Christmastime (Image: Kelly Nichols)

With more than 3,500 gifts being matched in St Helens over Christmastime, a response that "astounded" staff members during a cost of living crisis, Dunelm has again been asking customers to purchase and donate the items that are requested in store.

Also working with community groups such as Teardrops and the Restore Project, the campaign aims to give families in need gifts such as PE kits, summer clothes, objects for summer activities, or toys for the school holidays.

Local charity Teardrops has also been supporting the campaign (Image: Kelly Nichols)

In St Helens, the more heartbreaking requests have seen children ask for everyday items such as teddy bears or even a pair of "cool socks" so that they can "be like everyone else".

And while St Helens Dunelm has received more than double the requests than they anticipated, the response from the community, just as it was over Christmastime, has been "outstanding".

Many requests have already been donated by local customers, while other gifts have been sent to St Helens from people across the country.

Socks have been a common request at Dunelm (Image: Kelly Nichols)

Kelly Nichols, staff member at St Helens Dunelm, said: "Some requests have just absolutely broken my heart. I came across five young ladies asking for navy blue socks with bows on because 'everybody else has them, and we can't afford them, but I want to be like everybody else'. 

"How on earth are we in a position where kids are asking for school socks as a gift?

More donations to the summer Delivering Joy project (Image: Kelly Nichols)

"But the feedback from customers has been outstanding so far [..] and these tags have definitely touched the hearts of our customers.

"We've had parcels of socks arriving from across the UK, from people whose local stores aren't yet running this campaign but still wanted to help.

"The overriding sentiment seems to be that, although we're all struggling, seeing young girls asking for socks to be 'like everybody else', or a little one asking for a teddy bear, drives home just how much the smallest of things to one person can make the biggest of difference to somebody else."

The Dunelm store at St Helens Retail Park will be accepting donations until Sunday, June 30.

Kelly and the Restore team (Image: Kelly Nichols)