Kindness at Christmas

Christmas cheer was all around when second-year HND tourism and hospitality students from NPTC Group of Colleges hosted a “Kindness at Christmas” event at Ystalyfera Rugby club in December.

The event in conjunction with Kirstie Richards the local area coordinator and the team at Neath Port Talbot Social Services (NPTSS) provided meals and entertainment for 35 vulnerable local members of the community.  All families received ‘Christmas in a Bag’ donated by Gellionen Church with the children having the added present of a gift box each plus a Hungarian inspired ‘chimney cake’ baked on-site by one of the hospitality students, Anita Kacziba.

The event was a pilot for NPTSS’s Kindness in the Community project and the ideal opportunity for the HND and BA International Tourism and Event Management and HND Hospitality Management and the Culinary Arts students to achieve their in-person event as part of their degrees.

Part of the project also saw the students host a coffee morning to update Sioned Williams who is a Member of the Senedd for South West Wales before the event.

Janet Beale, Lecturer for Business, Tourism and Management at Neath College said

“It was an exciting, heart-warming event that lived up to its name – showing some Kindness at Christmas. 

The students were a credit to themselves, the College and their University and this was the first time we had the opportunity to work with a client. Neath Port Talbot Social Services, in particular Kirstie Richards who attended our weekly sessions and worked with the students.  This was the first event of a larger project – Kindness in the Community and hopefully, other groups will work on subsequent events.  

We hope we provided some happy memories and this will be followed up with a Book of Memories of Christmases past, present and future which the students will be working on after Christmas.”