Rehome your unwanted gifts

Diverse Abilities, a charity supporting children and adults with disabilities, has launched a call for the county’s unwanted Christmas presents to repurpose as raffle and auction lots throughout its fundraising events in 2025.

The Great Christmas Present Amnesty takes place throughout January where Dorset’s disability charity will accept unwanted and new items from the festive season including beauty products, shower gel sets, cookbooks, alcohol, food hampers and more. The only products excluded from the collection are electrical products.

Francesca Potton, community fundraiser at Diverse Abilities, commented: “We’ve all received that one present that we know we’ll never use, even though we know the thought was there, or received duplicates of the same thing because some people know you really well! These presents don’t need to linger in the back of the cupboard anymore as we will make good use of them throughout the year.”

Gifts can be dropped off at the Diverse Abilities Head Office at The Treehouse in Hurn, weekdays between 10am and 3pm. The address is The Treehouse, Merritown Lane, Christchurch, BH23 6DT.

Alternatively, individuals, community groups, and businesses can host their own collections to be dropped off at the head office together.

Francesca continued: “If you want to host your own collection, then we want to hear from you – we’ve got a helpful fundraising pack to support you along the way and explain how these contributions make a huge difference in our fundraising events.”

Visit diverseabilities.org.uk/presentamnesty for more details about how to drop off your gifts or to set up your own community collection.