Garfield Christmas 2024

Garfield Christmas Festival 2024

Garfield Christmas Festival 2024

A huge shout-out to all the amazing organisers and volunteers who made our Christmas Festival such a fantastic success! Your hard work, dedication, and passion truly shone through, and we couldn't have done it without you. From planning the logistics to ensuring everything ran smoothly on the day, your efforts brought our community together and created unforgettable memories. Thank you for your time, energy, and commitment to making Garfield a better place for everyone. We can't wait to see what you all come up with next!

Volunteers staffing our Community Table
(Jen - Moy-Yan Neighbourhood House; Meg - Community Garden and John - Community Website)

West Gippsland Rail Towns Community Christmas Day Lunch 2024

All the trimmings with lashing of Love & laughter!

Moy-Yan Neighbourhood House hosted the West Gippsland Rail Towns Community Christmas lunch, which was attended by 32 guests with 8 volunteers on the day and 10 volunteers helped set up the day before.

The Community Christmas day lunch was made possible via grants and donations.

A BIG thank You to Cardinia shire, Garfield Community shop, Bunyip Market & Beaconsfield College.

Posters & flyers inviting folks to join the lunch were shared along the West Gippsland Railway Towns. Connecting with those doing it hard financially, folks who live alone or may find themselves on their own Christmas day.

Community enjoying a meal together like this is fun, we connect and feel a sense of belonging.

It was a wonderful welcoming venue - Thank you to the Jefferson Road over 55's Village for the use of their common room.

Guests arrived as strangers and left as friends - with many keen to help with a 2025 Christmas day lunch.

An important aspect of the lunch was for our volunteers to join our guests, eat & chat - just like a family meal - oh and the Christmas crackers!! Silly hats & sillier jokes just complete it. 😊

Countrystyle Meats and Smokehouse of Garfield were our caterers - cooking the pork, ham, gravy & crackle to PERFECTION!!! And pre-preparing vegetables for volunteers to cook on Christmas day. Thank you, John & Kim and your amazing crew.

Volunteers purchased groceries, gifts for our younger guests, Christmas puddings and all the trimmings.

All guests received a handmade gorgeous red boomerang bag made by our Garfield sewers, filled with an assortment of items including a Woolies gift card. As with any family meal we sent the family home with a container or 2 of leftovers. 😉

There were giveaways on the day of books and jigsaw puzzles - with a lucky door prize of a large jigsaw puzzle!

A few photos were taken of the set up day, however we were all so busy working or chatting with guests at the lunch that we did not get any people photos! - not even the volunteers in the kitchen! Please enjoy our before photos.

It was a wonderful lunch, the effort of community working together to put the lunch on is confirmed by All the happy faces, only positive feedback and with offers of help for this year. Guests and volunteers worked together to tidy up.

A message we received " Thank you all so much for the most wonderful day. We have had the best Christmas ever and so appreciate it."