One week till Christmas! Here's how we've been celebrating...

Here at ReachOut, we've been counting down the days till Christmas for weeks now. We've had loads of events for young people, volunteers and staff to get excited about in the run up to the big day.

In London, we threw our first ever ReachOut Christmas Fete at the Petchey Academy for all our young people living in Hackney. There were lots of great games including an inflatable bungee run, bouncy castle and beat the goalie. Thanks to generous donations from Greggs and Sainsbury's Tottenham New we had a very busy cake stand too. The fete was staffed by a group of fantastic volunteers from Bloomberg and a few of ReachOut's regular volunteers. Thank you to everyone who donated their time or money to help make this great event happen. We'd also like to thank Chris King, who took the photos below.

Santa Mehmet

Junior Volunteers at the drinks stand

Volunteer Richard giving out crisps to mentees

Year 7 mentee Richie wins on the Bungee Run

Bloomberg volunteers making sweet packages for the fete

In both London and Manchester, we held a Christmas Pub Quiz where volunteers got together for a few drinks, a chance to meet to fellow mentors and some fiercely competitive quizzing.

The winning team in London

Quiz masters Jack and Joe in London

While we've been partying, our wonderful Junior Mentors have been volunteering this Christmas. Earlier this month, they raised an amazing £308.81 packing bags at Sainsbury's at an event organised by the ReachOut Society at Queen Mary University. Last weekend, some of our Junior Mentors volunteered for 'Film for Food', an organisation which aims to create awareness about food wastage, food shortage and food security. They packed boxes of food which were collected for Tower Hamlets Food Bank. We also had 10 volunteers who raised £1000 for us running 10k in Santa Suits!!

Junior Mentors Emily and Chin 

QM volunteer Ashley and Junior Mentor Mekki

Our fundraising Santa's before their 10k

In Manchester, we took our young people on some fun trips to celebrate the end of the term. Our Year 11 girls went trampolining at Jump Nation and our Year 10 girls went ice skating at Spinningfields Ice Rink. Each of the ReachOut Clubs had their own Christmas party on the last day of their project before the holidays.