A four-year-old boy with a big heart has been bringing joy to Londoners living on the streets this Christmas.

Little Hudson Suttie, four, from Chislehurst, has been delivering sleeping bags, rucksacks filled with essential items and handwritten Christmas cards to homeless men and women. It may be the only present they receive this year.

Hudson helps his family pack the crammed bags, which are filled with wollen gloves, three pairs of socks, thermal clothing, a silver foil survival bag, Sudocrem, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a pocket torch and biscuits.

‘I want to try and help,’ Hudson tells Metro.co.uk. ‘No-one should be cold at Christmas. I wish everyone had a warm home to go to, like I do.’

Hudson and his family support the charity Beat my Addictions and have been busy delivering the backpacks as part of their ‘Back to Kindness – Rucksack Appeal’. The charity was set up by Chris Hill who lost his twin brother to drug addiction.

Mum Lara, 44, says they’re only able to create the backpacks thanks to kind donations from friends, family, neighbours and colleagues, and Hudson helps with every part of the process.

‘He helps me pick the items at the multiple shopping trips, he then packs each rucksack for us and hands them out to those on the streets,’ she says.

‘Hudson now understands that some men and women do not have a home and that the blanket or sleeping bag that we give them may be the only way that they can keep warm.

‘He knows that unlike him and all his friends who go home to a warm safe home, not everyone does. They are people just like us.’

The family shouldn’t have to do this. But with the number of rough sleepers in London tripling since 2009, with more than 10,000 individuals now estimated to be living on the capital’s streets, underfunded services are stretched.

The mum believes it’s ‘so easy to get wrapped up’ in the ‘extravagance’ of Christmas, so getting involved in the campaign was a way to offer vital support, while teaching her young son a valuable life lesson.

‘It keeps everything in true perspective and you cannot lose sight of just how fortunate you really are to have a safe, warm home,’ she says. ‘It is this that we want to instill in Hudson, for life.’

The reaction from the homeless people opening the rucksacks is absolutely priceless, adds Lara, with many recipients asking ‘is all this for me?’

‘When you hand out a sleeping bag and see the genuine surprise and delight it is just the best feeling,’ she says.

‘Some people ask me: “Can you help me get inside the sleeping bag? Can you help me put my hat/gloves on? My hands are so cold I can’t use them.”‘

Four-year-old Hudson has been to various locations across London with mum Lara and dad Az, including Victoria, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Charring Cross.

The parents carefully gage when it’s appropriate to approach someone and understand not everyone will be open to a chat or a gift.

‘I try to gage eye contact and body language – having Hudson with me is often an ice breaker – people want to smile and engage with him,’ Lara says.

‘I’ll say something like: “Hudson’s been working hard this week packing up some rucksacks with things that we thought you might need. Would you like one?”

‘The reaction is instant – a smile followed by “That would be amazing, thank you.” Or “I’d love one please.”

Despite their limited resources, the recipients are often thinking of others rather than themselves.

‘Quite often I’m handed back the gloves and told: “I already have some – I don’t need these”,’ says Lara.

‘I want them to have both pairs but I’m told: “The next man you meet on the next street might not have a pair. Please give them to someone who needs them more”.’

Hudson also hands out handwritten cards, which read: Dear friend, I am thinking of you and hope this bag makes you smile. From your friend.

This year the family re-visited some of the people they helped last year and couldn’t believe how one person still carried the card from the previous year in their pocket.

‘While the rucksacks and sleeping bags are very practical, I can tell the most precious thing is the Christmas Card and the chat with us. Knowing that we care means the world,’ says Lara.

‘There is no simple solution but the connections we make extend far beyond the rucksacks.’

Some recipients become very emotional, such as a man named Jack in Waterloo.

‘When I gave him a sleeping bag he was so moved he cried and he gave me a hug – and I cried too,’ Lara says. ‘I opened it up and helped him get in because he was so cold he couldn’t move.’

Though each story the family hears on the streets is unique, Lara says they often follow a similar pattern – someone ‘caught in a vicious cycle because after losing their job they can’t afford the rent or mortgage and living with friends has an expiry date. Everyone I spoke to thought they would only be sleeping rough temporarily’.

One man called John told her: ‘It wasn’t long ago that I was just like you. But I lost my partner, my job, my home. They have been trying to house me but there’s a lot of people ahead of me on the list.’

Through their volunteering, the family have learnt that kindness is contagious.

‘I have noticed that when we stop and talk to someone living on the streets, other people stop as well. It’s as if they think: “They are doing something, maybe I should as well”,’ Lara says.

One woman who was watching me took off her scarf and gave it away saying: ’Please have my scarf and keep yourself warm.’ Another onlooker disappeared and came back with a KFC bucket meal. 

‘I was talking to a girl in Covent Garden who didn’t have anything on her feet. I showed her the socks that were in the rucksack. An onlooker asked what size her feet were and went and bought some shoes.

‘I think when people see someone doing something they also want to help. They realise the situation is safe, that it’s ok to approach.’

Source:
courtesy of METRO

by Kate Skelton

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