Jodie O’Connor, one of the organisers of ‘Pembroke Dock at Christmas’, which offers a free lunch, company and fun on Christmas Day, talks to reporter Patrick Ovenden about the event and how it got started.
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00:00 The idea behind Pembroke Dock at Christmas is to bring people together for Christmas,
00:05 maybe if they're lonely, if their family have got other plans.
00:10 Just to sort of bring people together, something fun for the community to do, have some nice
00:15 food, chats, a couple of games, some music.
00:18 The thing that inspired us to start putting on the event in 2022 and to continue it again
00:24 this year was the fact that more people than I had realised were feeling lonely during
00:30 the Christmas period and wanted something a little bit different to do maybe.
00:35 They wanted to help other people in the community as well, also feel part of the wider community
00:41 which is great and help others that maybe were feeling lonely or struggling financially
00:46 at this time of the year and needed somewhere to go with their family or friends.
00:50 We were supported last year by lots of local businesses and lots of people from the community
00:57 as well with donations, whether that was food or small financial donations which meant that
01:02 we could provide the event for free.
01:04 We also had entertainment and things provided free by Lionel who is actually doing it again
01:08 this year for us so he'll be putting on some music and sort of Christmas games.
01:13 He also had been given that sort of thing as well so we'll be hoping to do that again
01:17 this year.
01:18 We had around 30 people, we also had around 25 volunteers so whilst they were volunteers
01:25 a lot of them would also have been on their own for Christmas last year so it was great
01:30 to sort of have people mingling around, having a chat with others.
01:34 We served around 100 dinners so a lot of them went out to the community as well through
01:39 the volunteer service and also to places like the local ambulance station as well.
01:44 So my son, his birthday today actually, he's 11 and he has persuaded me to keep putting
01:49 on the event because he wanted to help out so he's very much looking forward to it.
01:53 He has been planning and making lists for the last few weeks which is great and he's
01:59 really excited about it.