Jodie talks about the ‘Pembroke Dock at Christmas’ lunch project

Tindle News

Jodie O’Connor, one of the organisers of ‘Pembroke Dock at Christmas’, which offers a free lunch, company and fun on Christmas Day, talks to reporter Patrick Ovenden about the event and how it got started.

Transcript

00:00 The idea behind Pembroke Dock at Christmas is to bring people together for Christmas,

00:05 maybe if they're lonely, if their family have got other plans.

00:10 Just to sort of bring people together, something fun for the community to do, have some nice

00:15 food, chats, a couple of games, some music.

00:18 The thing that inspired us to start putting on the event in 2022 and to continue it again

00:24 this year was the fact that more people than I had realised were feeling lonely during

00:30 the Christmas period and wanted something a little bit different to do maybe.

00:35 They wanted to help other people in the community as well, also feel part of the wider community

00:41 which is great and help others that maybe were feeling lonely or struggling financially

00:46 at this time of the year and needed somewhere to go with their family or friends.

00:50 We were supported last year by lots of local businesses and lots of people from the community

00:57 as well with donations, whether that was food or small financial donations which meant that

01:02 we could provide the event for free.

01:04 We also had entertainment and things provided free by Lionel who is actually doing it again

01:08 this year for us so he'll be putting on some music and sort of Christmas games.

01:13 He also had been given that sort of thing as well so we'll be hoping to do that again

01:17 this year.

01:18 We had around 30 people, we also had around 25 volunteers so whilst they were volunteers

01:25 a lot of them would also have been on their own for Christmas last year so it was great

01:30 to sort of have people mingling around, having a chat with others.

01:34 We served around 100 dinners so a lot of them went out to the community as well through

01:39 the volunteer service and also to places like the local ambulance station as well.

01:44 So my son, his birthday today actually, he's 11 and he has persuaded me to keep putting

01:49 on the event because he wanted to help out so he's very much looking forward to it.

01:53 He has been planning and making lists for the last few weeks which is great and he's

01:59 really excited about it.

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