Struggling families across Dumfries and Galloway have been given a helping hand to fill their bellies into the New Year thanks to new charity, Us2U.
A region-wide outpouring of festive goodwill saw more than £10,000 worth of foodstuffs or cash donated, which led a team of volunteers in Dumfries to buy and bag up enough to feed 400 families.
Each family – nominated by an agency, organisation or school – received enough food to make up a two-course Christmas Day dinner for six people, plus bacon rolls and ketchup for breakfast, as well as two extra meals and a 20-item cupboard filler bag with easy recipes to help into the New Year. There was even chocolate and biscuits as treats.
For a few years now, and formerly known as the Christmas Gesture, Dumfries dad Lee Vann-Wakelin has made it an annual festive appeal to help those most in need with some form of food donation.
And the growing support to help – and rise in demand aided by the cost of living crisis – encouraged him to ask supporters to set up the charity, Us2U.
With Lee as chairperson and Stuart Rae as vice chairperson, it has taken the festive campaign from a social enterprise to charitable status so they can ask for grant aid as well as the usual donations.
It also meant they were able to go bigger and better– taking it from just Dumfries to region-wide, and helped 400 families, with Lee pledging that “one hundred per cent of all donations towards foods, either financially or in physical donation, will go towards the Gesture hampers”.
Lee and Us2U members Peter Graves, Derek Wakelin, Euan Macleod and Lincoln Vann-Wakelin, as well as an army of more than 30 volunteer packers and drivers were at Troqueer Church Hall on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning to bag everything up.
He said: “I believe this was the year that people took us seriously.
“I do not know if it was due to becoming a charity, Us2U, or if it’s just gaining traction but I’d like to thank everyone who donated either cash – every £25 raised fed a family of six – or donated the foodstuffs we needed, and all those came to help bag or deliver it to the agencies.
“The cost this year for all 400 hampers was around £10,000, however, unlike in previous years where we have had to gain cash donations to buy the food items, this year a light lit among hundreds of Dumfries and Galloway people, who came together in groups and started to raise money for us to buy foods with, or pledged to buy the likes of 400 boxes of oats or 400 bottles of ketchup and so on from our list.
“We are talking about a lot of different groups in Annan, Dumfries and other areas across the region.
“We had businesses give us large financial donations; we had boxes supplied and packing bags; and we even had food donated from Lochside Community Centre and The Olive Retreat in Castle Douglas for the volunteers to eat while we spent hours packing the 400 hampers – the list is endless, and we thank each and every one who helped.”
Lee added: “We have found that schools have taken more hampers than usual this year for families and this shows the dreadful need food poverty is becoming in our region.
“Because of this, we cannot have kids being left behind and having Christmas become a time of misery.
“So, for Christmas 2025, we have already decided that Us2U have a new target of doing 500 hampers.”
Those agencies and groups who benefited were: Sandside Community Garden, Lochside Community Centre, Caerlaverock Primary School, Brownhall Primary School, Sanquhar Primary School, Georgetown Primary School, Dumfries and Galloway Befriending Project, Annan’s Elmvale Primary School, Oasis Youth Centre, Kelloholm Young Mums, St Andrew’s RC Primary School, D&G LIFT, Buddies Dumfries, Wallace Hall Academy, River Of Life Church, Dumfries, Veterans Garden, Wheatley Homes across Dumfries and Galloway, Gretna Primary School, Summerhill Community Centre, Dumfries YMCA, Annan’s Kate’s Kitchen, Dalbeattie Primary School, Calside Primary School, Dumfries High School, Dalbeattie High School, Wright’s Store in Dalry, Thornhill Community Food Initiative and Kelloholm Primary.