This year, why not weave a little Christmas kindness into your shopping? The perfect way to do this is to buy a Christmas gift for an Australian foster child via The Pyjama Foundation.

The Pyjama Foundation, who provide learning based mentoring programs free to children in foster care are running a Christmas toy drive and they urgently need your help!  They have fallen well short of the number of toys they need for a number of Children’s Christmas Parties taking place in early December.

The Pyjama Foundation are seeking gifts for boys and girls aged from babies to 16 years, and they have kindly pre-prepared a list of suggestions of what you could buy:

Babies – Toddlers: Toy prams, toy lawnmowers, musical and educational toys
Pre-primary: Duplo, Dolls, tea sets, costumes, sand equipment
Primary: Boardgames, science experiment kits, super hero costumes, cookbooks, utensils, construction sets, vouchers
Teens: Sports equipment, fashion accessories, jewellery, music, CDs, craft, vouchers

You can also help by encouraging your workplace to hold a toy drive (this week) or if you don’t have time to shop you can simply make a direct donation here.

Gifts (preferably unwrapped) can be given in both Sydney and Brisbane locations. For more information call (07) 3256 8802 or email donate@thepyjamafoundation.com

Brisbane drop off: Unit 7, 10 Depot St BANYO (ASAP during office hours)

Sydney drop off: contact lisa@thepyjamafoundation.com

Children in care have the worst educational outcomes of any group of children in Australia (AIHW).  Statistics also show that 92% of children in foster care have below average reading skills by the time they are only seven years of age, and it is a struggle for them to catch up. The single most important activity you can do to improve your children’s literacy skills is to read book aloud to them – and this is exactly what The Pyjama Foundation do, they recruit and screen Pyjama Angels to read aloud to children in care – they visit the same child every week for 1.5 hours to read books aloud, play educational games and work on their numeracy skills.

Visit the The Pyjama Foundation website here or follow their facebook here.

This is a fantastic way to foster philanthropy in your children, actively involve your kids in what you are doing, go shopping with them, let them choose the gift, telling them about the plight of foster children and show them first hand  that Christmas is about giving.

Read your child an extra book tonight and give them an extra big hug.