Santa in the remote villages

New Year is the time when people are waiting for a miracle to happen, a time when dreams are supposed to come true and new hope for a brighter future emerges. Sometimes though some families are deprived of these festive feelings because they are too busy combatting life’s challenges.

This New Year holiday, we wanted to reach out to families living in remote villages of our country, and bring joy to them by surprising their children with gifts delivered by Santa Claus himself! This was a tremendous project that brought together a lot of individuals and organizations for a great cause – to make these holidays memorable and happy for the children who are left out.

A total of 6308 AZN were collected, which made it possible to buy gifts for more than 900 children living in the most remote villages of Agdam, Tartar, Barda, Neftchala, and Qusar. More than 2000 gifts were distributed to the children, including children’s books, warm cloths, winter scarves and gloves, various toys, puzzles, Lego constructions, developmental and educational wooden and soft toys. The collected funds were spent on the gifts and the transportation costs of the team. For more details and the receipts of the expenses, please click here.

We would like to use this opportunity to express our gratitude to the following individuals and organizations for their indispensable contribution and commitment to making this project come to life. None of this would be possible without them.

To our amazing Santa Claus actors who distributed the gifts and traveled from early dawn to late night just to put a smile on the children’s faces – Etibar Huseynov, Mahammad Jalilov, and Farzulla Abbasov. You made the children’s holiday come alive with a little bit of a New Year's miracle! To Elya, Gulchin, Aydan, and Rugiyya – for their tremendous support to this project. To Aziz Karimov – our one-of-a-kind photographer who was there to capture the most precious moments and keep these memories forever.

To our teams at LU-MUN Holding, European Azerbaijan School, Chenille Fashion Studio, WSpace, VarYox, Oxbridge School, TISA Action Network, EY employees, The Azerbaijan-UK Alumni Association, The US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association, Eureka Lyceum, Zeka Stationery – for their help in collecting the donations. To the Embassy of Israel, Elchin Safarli, Araz Yusubov, and hundreds of our community members for their financial donations.

To Libraff, 3 Alma, Parlaq Imzalar publishing houses for the wonderful books that they donated.

To Camping Azerbaijan and Ecofront for letting us use their office space and supporting the project from beginning to end.

To the amazing people who supported us in the regions and helped us to navigate in the most remote locations – to Nurlan Aslanov in Agdam and Tartar, to Server Ramazanli in Barda, to Elshan Majidov in Neftchala, to Asif bey in Qusar.

To “Azerbaijan Poultry Company” for letting us use the “Mərcan” trucks. To the drivers – Fariz bey, Anar bey, Shamil bey who supported us with the transportation.

215 AZN is left from the donated funds, which are going to be used to take the children deprived of parental care to the cinema.

Being a part of this project and witnessing first-hand how community members came together to make a difference in the lives of children was an extremely humbling and wonderful experience. We feel privileged and honored to earn the trust of our communities, and our aspiration is to carry this legacy forward as we continue working with underprivileged children and families. Now more than ever we are confident that great things happen when kind-hearted people join their strengths and come together for a good cause.

24.12.2021 - 02.01.2022