Father Christmas visits Scotlands Estate in Wolverhampton.

Express & Star

Locals in Wolverhampton were surprised with a visit from Father Christmas last night, as he met kids up and down the Scotland's Estate dishing out gifts and hearing the city's little-one's Christmas wishes.

Transcript

00:00Hello, it's Dan here at the Express and Star and today we are in Wolverhampton

00:05because the Rotary Club is putting on a special event where Father Christmas is

00:09coming to visit all the kids in the Scotland's state.

00:12Hi, my name is Mark Hayward, I'm the president of the Chetmore Rotary Club and I've had the privilege of being there for the last three years.

00:19The Rotary Club is a voluntary organisation for anybody to join, male or female, who want to serve.

00:27The motto is service before self and so it's people who want to enjoy fellowship and fun together,

00:33but also with the purpose of raising money for charities.

00:35This event with going around the estates and our Santa sleigh has been going for more than 20 years now.

00:42We go around supermarkets, we go to Sainsbury's and we go around five or six different of the local estates

00:49where we're kind of meeting with local families as you can see this evening.

00:54Having a wonderful time seeing them meet Santa and to kind of give a little small gift away

01:00and ultimately it's a way of putting back into community something that we might want to kind of,

01:07we've been very privileged in kind of our lives and we just want to make sure that everybody benefits

01:12in some way from a bit of fun, a bit of entertainment and enjoying each other's time together.

01:18My name is Amelia and I'm from Wolverhampton.

01:22Rebecca from Wolverhampton.

01:24I think things like this is a good thing because it makes children happy to see Santa.

01:31Yeah, same and the kids love seeing Santa on the street.

01:35There's not many places now where you can type the children so this is, something's really special

01:41and she loves seeing every year.

01:42I'm probably, I'm really obsessed with like reborn dolls these days

01:49and I kind of like skincare and books and stuff.

01:54My name is Jack, I am from Wolverhampton, Wensfield and I am 23

01:58and I am an administrator for a forklift company.

02:03So I feel like this is a good thing, the reason why it brings a lot of people together.

02:07I also think as well because it's good for the children to see Santa.

02:11I think it also brings a lot of people together as well in terms of understanding different charities

02:18because I know this is a royalty free charity so I feel like it also gives good exposure

02:23to people that wouldn't actually know about it as well.

02:26Hi there, I'm Sergeant Pete, I'm from Perth and I'm 36 years old.

02:30So this event, we knock the doors so the little kids can see Santa.

02:36This is my eighth year knocking the doors but I've been in the Army Cadets for nine years.

02:41It's mainly raising money for local charities, not only that,

02:45but you can actually see the youth organisations helping out the local charities as well,

02:51such as the Tetler Rocha Club.

02:53We couldn't do this without the support of Whittock Hall School,

02:57who look after our sleigh over the year.

02:59Lister's have provided the tow vehicle for the sleigh this year, otherwise Santa would be walking.

03:04And we've got the Army Cadets from 3 Mercian who come and support us

03:10and we're able to leave the vehicle overnight between our sleigh collections at 3 Mercian in Faldings Park.

03:17So all of these people, plus our 35, 40 Rotarians,

03:23all contribute to actually making this a fantastic event for the youngsters and their families.

03:28And then the lovely by-product is the financial rewards of that £30,000 over the year of our events.

03:35Think of that going back into our own community.

03:38Absolutely every penny goes straight back into the community.

03:41We're just volunteers giving up only our time to have the privilege to enjoy this, this evening.

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