Leamington supermarket carries out successful Christmas operation to help Afghan refugees and the homeless in Warwickshire

A Leamington supermarket has organised a successful Christmas present donation operation which will help families across Warwickshire for the second year running.

Operation Snowfall was set up by Alex Pearson the community champion at Morrisons Leamington and is inspired by the Operation Christmas Child international campaign.

Alex said: "Last Christmas we needed to support families around us who maybe would struggle to buy many presents due to adults being furloughed or losing their jobs during the pandemic.

"This year we decided to focus on refugees families from Afghanistan and homeless people.

"Everyone deserves a Christmas and I was blown away by the generosity of the customers."

Customers picked up shoe boxes, which had been donated to the store by Sports Direct and Clarks in Leamington, and filled them while they did their shopping at the store.

The boxes were loaded into a van with the help of Warwick Mayor Cllr Richard Edginton and Alex and his friends from Warwickshire Search and Rescue then delivered them to people around the area.

Ian Malins, the chairman of Warwickshire Search and Rescue, said "We are honoured to have been asked to support this again.

"Last year was amazing and was a great thing for the team to be apart of.

We are all volunteers and our charity is run from donations and doing things like this gets our names out and brings awareness of what we do.

"We are always happy to help and Alex has been a great support to us over the past two years."