Hundreds of homeless people in Edinburgh will enjoy Christmas dinner today – and meals for months to come – thanks to the generosity of ‘ordinary’ people from all over the world.
Josh Littlejohn, co-founder of social enterprise sandwich shop Social Bite, said he has been ‘blown away’ by the public’s response to a social media appeal.
Social Bite teamed up with the Itison.com deal site and asked people to make a £5 donation, and the response was immediate – within hours of the promotion going online 7000 vouchers had been sold!
Josh and partner Alice Thomson had hoped to raise enough to pay for 800 meals but public response to the appeal was incredible – Social Bite received enough pledges for 35,000 plates of turkey!
That fantastic public response means they will be able to feed homeless people all next year at their Edinburgh and Glasgow shops.
Social Bite gives 100% of its profits to charity and recruits people from homeless backgrounds. They have two premises in Edinburgh (Rose Street and Shandwick Place), one in Glasgow and plan to open in Aberdeen and Dundee next year.
Mr Littlejohn said the reaction on Twitter and Facebook had been ‘amazing’ with donations coming from all over the world – people from as far afield as Romania, Nepal and the United States contributed to the appeal.
He told the BBC: “Nicola Sturgeon bought one. Michelle Mone put a thing on her Twitter about how she bought one and then someone said ‘I’ll buy a hundred Christmas dinners if I can take you out for dinner’, and she said ‘If you buy 200 it’s a deal.’
“Two other guys chipped in and said ‘I’ll buy 200 to take you out’, so I think she’s got three dinner dates but she helped us sell 600 dinners! It just shows Christmas spirit is alive and well.”
For further information about Social Bite go to:
www.Social-bite.co.uk