THE Society of St James is a charity providing a range of support and accommodation to vulnerable adults and young people with a wide range of needs, with services based in Southampton working with local people.

In December we launched our Christmas Appeal to help raise money to provide a Christmas dinner and a gift to all of the people we support. We also ran for the first time a Shoe Box Appeal to provide other essential items.

On behalf of the society I would like to extend our thanks to everyone who contributed to our appeal.

We have been overwhelmed by the donations and by the thought and consideration that people put into filling the shoe boxes.

We distributed more than 250 shoe boxes and provide a Christmas dinner and other food for the Christmas period for all of the people living in our supported accommodation and the reaction from them was truly heart-warming!

Many of the people we support have no family or social networks and Christmas can be a very isolating and distressing time and the generosity of local people has really been a huge benefit to them.

Many local people have given their gifts anonymously so we have been unable to personally thank everyone for their support, so we would like to say a public thank you to all of you for your kindness and generosity, which helped us to make Christmas enjoyable for so many people.

Jane E Smith, The Society of St James