Kaieteur News puts smiles on more than 2000 faces countrywide

Dec 21, 2008 News

Kaieteur News Publisher Glenn Lall put smiles on the faces of more than 2,000 children across the country by granting them the wishes they had stated in letters to Santa Claus.
The initiative was a sort of rescue mission after a gift giveaway for the holidays, initiated by the National Communications Network (NCN) and Sterling Products, went sour.
The promotion, initiated by the two agencies last month and publicised on NCN, invited children to write to Santa Claus requesting a gift for a deserving friend.

Staff members sorting through the huge pile of letters to Santa

According to the advertisement, the letters should be addressed to PO Box 10708 c/o Santa Claus, North Pole, and the closing date for the promotion was December 15.
Lall was thrown into the role of Old St Nick quite by chance.
Earlier in the week, he requested a reporter to check with the Guyana Post Office Corporation to see if any letters were sent to Santa Claus through that entity.
His intention was to grant them their wishes.
Post office staffers, however, informed that this year no letters were sent to that entity because of the promotion launched by NCN and Sterling Products.
Determined to bring Christmas cheer to children, Lall then offered to take some of the letters from the set to send gifts to the children.
When Kaieteur News called Sterling Products, Sales and Marketing Assistant Rita Beharry was only too happy to oblige.
She explained that Sterling Products and NCN had made a mistake and had “bitten off more than they could chew.”
“Your boss is a Godsend for wanting to take some of these letters off our hands… We didn’t expect so many letters; we have a big garbage bag full… Every day we clear the PO Box, more and more letters keep flowing in. We are overwhelmed. (We) can’t buy gifts for all these children,” she lamented.
On hearing this, Lall immediately made the decision to take all the letters to stave off the disappointment of the hundreds of children.
“I couldn’t let that happen… It’s Christmas, and these children wrote to Santa and are expecting to get something from him. Many of them still believe in Santa Claus, and even though it was more than I had planned to do, I had to do something,” Lall said.
Meanwhile, Sterling Products had already decided to heed the request of 20 children, a number that was minuscule when compared with the number of requests.
Kaieteur News staff immediately sprang into action, sorting the huge piles of mail, working until the wee hours of the morning.
Gifts were quickly bought, sorted out by location, and wrapped.
Yesterday, Lall and other staff members made the first set of donations, shipping the gifts to the various destinations from the newspaper’s Saffon Street offices.
The others are to be delivered before Tuesday to the children’s homes.