Pegasus, the courier services company, has extended the project ‘Gifts for kids’ in 2000 owing to the success registered in the previous year and managed to keep the interest alive in protecting institutionalized children and giving them a chance to spend a wonderful Christmas.
The project, which has been developed over the past three years, is very simple: institutionalized children make Christmas cards by hand, then the cards are sold to the business community and the money is used to buy Christmas gifts for children in different institutions in Bucharest. Over the last two years, Pegasus has worked with Save the Children (Romania) foundation while in the first year they cooperated with Casa Buburuza (House of the Ladybird).
“The main reason for continuing this project every year is that we think it is important to give something back to the community we live in,” said James Gray-Cheape, Managing Director of Pegasus. “It is good that we were able to provide the necessary equipment and tools for the children to work with.”
Over 120 children aged between seven and 17 from five institutions and the “Gavroche Social Center” produced 2,700 Christmas cards last year, which were all sold to business people.
Pegasus was in charge with distributing the cards, which were sold here and in the UK for more than 3,000 USD. “Delivering cards came as a natural part of our business because this is what we do every day,” said Gray - Cheape. Christmas cards were sold in packages of ten for 12 USD.
Children started to work on the cards as early as September, with materials bought by Pegasus, while the ‘Save the Children’ foundation coordinated the children’s efforts. The project preparation started in January, this way youngsters could work more efficiently, producing more than in the previous year when only 1,000 were made.
“It could be have sounded strange: it was January and we were talking about Christmas cards, but this organization helped children make more cards and get a larger amount of money,” said Nina Cugler, project director of ‘Save the Children’.
Besides distribution, Pegasus also took care of informing the business community about this project to convince companies to buy the cards. “We started to tell people here about the project at the beginning of November and sold the Christmas cards at the end of November. We also sold some in the UK,” added Gray - Cheape.
According to him among the companies interested in buying cards handmade by children were Mercury, the Romanian American Enterprise Fund, Romanian Business Guide, Altheimer & Gray and Drosa Impex.
The project ended with a Christmas party sponsored by Coca Cola, at Cercul Militar in Bucharest, where all the children who worked at creating cards received their Christmas gifts. Many of the donors as well as staff and business partners of Pegasus attended the event. The children read poems, sang songs, played music, exhibited glass painted icons and then received their rewards – Christmas presents from Father Christmas himself.
