WOMEN from Flintshire have provided some festive cheer to the homeless by giving them Christmas gifts.

Kayley Dodd, 28, Cara Murphy, 19, Alex Peters, 21, and Della Diamond, 36, from Flint, took to the streets of Chester and Liverpool to distribute Christmas boxes among the city’s homeless.

Food items, toiletries, warm clothing and sleeping bags were passed over as the harsh winter weather draws closer.

Kayley Dodd said: “Me and a couple of my friends have been saying for years that we’d love to do something for the homeless. So last week we were talking about it and saying how we’d been shopping to different places and noticed how many more homeless people there seemed to be in Both Chester and Liverpool.

“We thought back to the ‘Operation Christmas child’ we used to do in school with the toys in shoe boxes and it just went from there really.

“We just thought how much of a difference a box of essentials would make to people and then with the cold weather setting in we thought why stop at the basic essentials and why not try and get a load of coats, jumpers,hats, scarves, gloves, blankets and socks to try and make this cold weather more sustainable.

Kayley and friends appealed for items on social media.

She added: “We wrote on our local ‘Of Flint’ and ‘From Bagillt’ pages on Facebook and also on our own Facebook asking for any donations people could spare and we received such a good response, it was over whelming.

“We had a few people from local companies contact us to help out such as Nice Pack with baby wipes, Oasis with tooth pastes and Jollies with dog food. We could not have done it without the community getting behind us.”

The girls are overwhelmed with the support they have received following their appeal.

Kayley added: “We were aiming to make 15 boxes with 15 parcels to go with it, but we ended up after all the donations making 25 boxes and 25 parcels.

“We actually handed out 11 boxes with a parcel actually to 11 people but we ran out of time as we were sitting with them speaking to them about their lives and how they got to be on the streets and what experiences they’ve had and what help there is for them, it was an eye opener for us all.

The girls handed the remainder of the boxes to the Whitechapel Centre, a charity working with the homeless in Liverpool.

Kayley said: “We are still getting donations so we’ve managed to make another eight boxes and we plan to do a trip to Chester over the coming weeks to hand them out there.

“It’s been one of the best experiences of our lives and we will definitely be doing it again and hopefully on a bigger scale next time.

“Listening to people’s stories as to why they’re homeless, it’s amazing how positive some of them were and how lovely, genuine and honest they were.

“We heard about how many deaths some of these individuals have witnessed due to cold weather and starvation, it was mind blowing.”