Real-life Santa spends £15,000 to help under-privieged children

A real-life Santa has spent almost £15,000 filling 37 trollies with toys and donated them all to a charity for underprivileged children, a news report has claimed. Reese Fletcher, of Fletcher’s Fencing, Decking and Garden Maintenance, and his team of helpers also gave good causes a further £4,000 of gift cards for older children.

The team also donated the rest of their £22,000 fundraising effort to a suicide prevention charity.

Reese, 31, and his team turned piles of timber donated by local firms into 1,600 Christmas trees, which they sold for £10 each to raise the cash.

They then used the money to fund a trolley dash in toy shops to buy gifts, which he then distributed to good causes helping children in his hometown of Leeds.

Kind-hearted Reese said: “No kid should be without a gift at Christmas. Times are getting hard and the numbers of people struggling are getting bigger.

“It’s nice to be nice and do something to help others.

“We had a big social media push and a lot of people have seen it and a lot of people that saw it last year followed us in the hope we’d do it again.

“The response this year compared to last year has just been amazing.

“It’s pretty much doubled, the amount we’ve raised in total.

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This is the third consecutive year that the father of two brought joy to the underprivileged children by getting them presents on Christmas.

He raised £3,000 from the sale of 260 trees which he’d knocked using timber from his firm Fletcher’s Fencing, Decking and Garden Maintenance.

Last year he raised more than £10,000 to help give kids a Christmas present.

He added: “We had a great donation from Premier Timber and BSW and a farmer gave us the use of his barns to store them in. Everybody comes together and wants to help.”