Continuing the Christmas spirit through donations

FOR a fifth year, fifteen-year-old creator of the Happiness Advent Calendars enterprise Jake Sbardella has wrapped up 2020 sales and donated some much-needed funds to a variety of organisations.

Having previously raised $19,500, Mr Sbardella said he was proud to have donated a further $4300 to continue assisting the most vulnerable in the community.

“It’s gone really good, definitely wasn’t expecting much to happen this year but certainly we have managed to raise a considerable amount,” he said.

“We’ve built up a relationship with the organisations over the years and they know where the money needs to go, and they can make good use of it.

“I’m heading into year 10 next year and I think I’ll still want to do this again for sure.”

When he was 10 years old Jake wanted to find a way to help the homeless and came up with the idea to sell the Happiness Advent Calendars as a way of making a positive difference.

In addition to the calendars, which contain a happiness quote each day counting down to Christmas, this year he also started selling homemade pallet Christmas trees thanks to help from his grandfather.

“Normally we would sell them at markets, so without markets we just sort of had to sell them to people who already knew about us online and through a few shops in Ballarat,” Jake’s mum Emma Sbardella said.

“We didn’t sell as much as we normally would, so we have enough stock to get us through next year.

“Rather than save some money from what we have raised to print calendars for next year, we just donated fully what we raised.”

The total of last year’s fundraising effort was split among four community organisations including $500 worth of food vouchers to Uniting Care Ballarat, $1400 to Anglicare Ballarat, $1200 to The Soup Bus and $1200 for St Vincent DePaul.

The Soup Bus’s food coordinator Lorraine Gittings said Jake’s donation will go towards educating young people.

“We pay for 10 students to go to Loreto, St Pats and Damascus and it costs us $60,000 to put the child through for six year and we must have the money before we put the child on,” she said,

“Ten have gone through and we’re putting three through this year… all of them have gone through to year 12 with a score no lower than 88.

“It’s not just the education bit, we make sure they have uniforms and whatever else and we also look at the social aspect, we give them support and support the parent.”