Christmas is a time for giving and extending goodwill to those who need it the most. At Amazon, we’re working with our employees, communities, and charity partners to raise funds and provide support to vulnerable people throughout the festive period and beyond.
Read on to learn about some of the projects we’re working on this Christmas and how customers can get involved.
Christmas is a time for giving and extending goodwill to those who need it the most. At Amazon, we’re working with our employees, communities, and charity partners to raise funds and provide support to vulnerable people throughout the festive period and beyond.
Read on to learn about some of the projects we’re working on this Christmas and how customers can get involved.
Since the start of 2022, we have donated over 1.5 million essential products to more than 150,000 families in need across Scotland and Greater Manchester through The Multibank initiative, founded by Amazon and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. To bring extra magic to children experiencing poverty, our toys team will deliver hundreds of our top 10 toys of the year for children to open on Christmas Day.
The toys will be delivered on the back of a life-size Tonka-style truck, which will tour the UK in the run-up to Christmas, stopping off at the Multibank sites in Wigan and Fife, and to the Faith in Families charity in Swansea.
The Multibank initiative supports families fighting poverty throughout the year by providing surplus household essentials like nappies, toothpaste, and school uniforms, donated by Amazon and other companies, and giving them to those who need them most.
The Felix Project has two simple goals: to stop good food going to waste and to make sure no Londoner goes hungry. The charity delivers food to more than 1,000 organisations across London’s 32 boroughs and the City of London, reaching families and children, the homeless, the elderly, domestic abuse survivors, refugees, people on low incomes, people struggling with mental health and addiction, and more.
To provide vulnerable people with quality, healthy food, we’re working with The Felix Project on a new Food Donation Drive.
While shopping on Amazon, customers can add food items they want to donate to their basket. Instead of being delivered to their home address, they will be delivered directly to The Felix Project who will pass them onto those in need across the capital.
In addition to the Food Donation Drive, Amazon works with The Felix Project to help transport meals to the charity’s network of community organisations. Since 2022, our network of Delivery Service Partners and drivers have contributed over 9,000 hours of their time, distributing more than 6.4 million food items to those in need. Amazon employees regularly volunteer at The Felix Project’s depots and kitchens, and we have donated millions of meals to the charity through Amazon Fresh Stores and depots.
Winter is a difficult time for many people in need, particularly during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, with families having to choose between paying the rent, heating their homes, eating, or keeping clean.
That’s why we’re supporting In Kind Direct’s Warmth This Winter campaign, to help keep people warm and well throughout the colder months.
Amazon has donated £20,000 to help with the charity’s fundraising costs, and we’ve proxy shopped £5,000 worth of kettles and toasters, helping the charity’s funds go even further. Our employees have also got involved – we held two knitting events at our fulfilment centres in Coalville and Dunstable, where Amazon employees packed 500 kits made up of thermal gloves, thermal socks, a sleeping bag, a hat, a lip balm, and a scarf, worth £20,000.
As part of The Prince’s Trust’s Million Makers Entrepreneurial challenge, a team of Amazon employees are selling a range of “mind-positive” merchandise, including t-shirts and hoodies designed by The Prince's Trust Young Ambassadors. Customers can buy the designs exclusively on Amazon, with at least 15% of the purchase price of each item sold donated to the charity to help young people from disadvantaged communities to build the confidence and skills to live, learn and earn.
From Giving Tuesday on 28 November to 31 December, Amazon employees are encouraged to volunteer for local organisations they feel passionate about. For every employee who volunteers, and for every hour of volunteering they complete, Amazon will donate a meal to a local charity or organisation focused on supporting food security. Teams across the UK have already supported over 90 foodbanks, including in Plymouth, Daventry, Dartford, East Durham, Thurrock, and Leeds, with combined cash and food donations worth more than £180,000.
Amazon employees will be taking part in Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day, wearing their festive knits to help kids in the UK and around the world get the future they deserve. For every employee who snaps a picture of themselves in a specially themed photobooth, Amazon will donate £1 directly to Save the Children.
In partnership with leading children’s charity Barnardo’s, we’ve opened our Second Chance Store in London, where customers can shop quality returned, refurbished, and open-box products from Amazon for up to 50% off. All proceeds from the store will go directly to Barnardo’s, helping them to transform the lives of millions of vulnerable children in the UK.
Amazon has donated more than 4,000 products that shoppers can purchase from the store, which also features a Repair Zone where customers can get involved in free repair workshops onsite.
The store is located at the Brunswick Centre in Central London and will be open until 12 December.
Amazon for Charity is a dedicated online shop where customers can buy products sold by major UK charities. We waive all referral fees so 100% of the profits go directly to their good causes. Customers can purchase Christmas cards and other popular gifts from Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Royal British Legion, Cancer Research UK and the Natural History Museum, alongside other products they might normally buy on Amazon.co.uk.
Magic Breakfast is a charity that delivers free breakfasts to school children facing hunger every day. A hungry child cannot concentrate, so could miss out on half a day of lessons every school day if not given anything nutritious to eat in the morning. Amazon is a proud long-standing supporter of Magic Breakfast and have helped to deliver more than 7 million breakfasts to children at risk of hunger. We’ve also made an additional £140,000 cash donation to help the charity continue its impactful work throughout winter.
More than half a million UK students have received free computer science education through Amazon Future Engineer, helping to prepare young people across the UK for a digital future.
Amazon’s free computer science education programme aims to bridge the digital skills gap by providing more opportunities to young people in underserved and underrepresented communities. We recently launched an exciting new challenge, Coding For Climate Action, that enables young people to explore natural hazards and design and develop solutions to monitor potential hazards, transmitting messages to communities so that they are able to take evasive action. This and other free coding courses, virtual school trips, and AI challenges will be available to all throughout the festive season and beyond.
Learn more about how Amazon supports its communities.
