London’s black taxi drivers gave up their evenings of fares to deliver donations of Christmas presents to help the homeless through winter.
Volunteers from the Support Black Taxis have spent the last few weeks appealing for and gathering Christmas presents for the capital’s homeless people, which were delivered on Monday.
The group of drivers helped organise around 550 packages of donations made up of warm clothing, sleeping bags, food and other essentials.
The volunteers worked with Streets Kitchen, a non-profit organisation which provides information for the homeless, to work out where the best locations to deliver the gifts would be.
"The aim has been to get people to donate parcels made up of good clean clothing, for example, jumpers, hats, gloves, socks, blankets, sleeping bags, toiletries and food," said a spokeswoman for the group.
People were asked to drop donations off in Vincent Square, Westminster, with all the gifts before around 50 cabbies started the hand out.
Taxi drivers took the opportunity to share what they were doing on social media.
A Twitter user going by the name of Blue Lion2007 said: “Just given some parcels by Marylebone to the homeless their faces said it all."
Another cab driver tweeted: "Realising what you have when other have so little :( I’ve been truly humbled and I know what real gratitude is #christmascabbies."
Karen Hilbrown from Support Black Cabs said: "The idea about delivering parcels to the homeless was put to us on Facebook and we put it to a group of cabbies.
"All the parcels had a label on with the contents marked.
"The appreciation of the peolpe who received the parcels was wonderful and we were overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone who donated parcels and allt he cabbies who donated their time too."
