Residents at The Hillings care home, in Eaton Ford, received a huge pile of shoeboxes filled with gifts from the community team at Tesco in St Neots.

Members of the team visited the home, in Grenville Way, on December 9 and delivered 72 individual shoeboxes full of gifts that had been wrapped by store staff and members of the community at a ‘wrapping party’ attended by mayor of St Neots, Councillor Derek Giles. Every resident at the home, which provides residential and dementia-focused care for the elderly, received gifts and enjoyed an afternoon with the Tesco team.

The visit, and donation, was part of Tesco’s Little Boxes campaign, which provides elderly care home residents across the area with a ‘little box’ filled with Christmas gifts.

Hillings manager Deb Wiltshire said: “We are so grateful to the community team at Tesco, St Neots, for their generosity in delivering these gifts to our residents. It is such a wonderful campaign that really makes a difference to the lives of elderly people who are not able to spend Christmas at home.

“We’d like to thank all of the Tesco team for providing our residents with a fabulous festive afternoon, but also the students at Crosshall School who gave their time to wrap the gifts and all the members of the community who so kindly donated.”

Ross Williams-Gick, from the team, said: “The Little Boxes project has been one of the most enjoyable projects I have been able to work on. It was truly humbling to see the generosity of the great St Neots public. We had enough to fill more than the required number so we will now be giving these out to groups who visit lonely people on Christmas Day. I would like to thank everyone who got involved.”