CHRISTMAS for hundreds of the town’s most needy people has been made a lot brighter by the efforts of a Bolton charity.

Urban Outreach’s Christmas Dinner on Jesus project has been so enthusiastically received that they handed out 600 family hampers of goodies to churches and instiutions at Tonge Bridge Industrial Park yesterday.

Bolton at Home, Greater Manchester Police, Bolton Wanderers and Bolton School were among the organisations to support the project, which will reach 768 children and 860 adults in Bolton.

The Mayor of Bolton, Cllr Colin Shaw, and his wife Dee attended the event, which saw hundreds of packages distributed between 2pm and 6pm yesterday.

Dave Bagley, Urban Outreach’s chief executive, said: “This is restoring something of the hope of Christmas to people.

“I can think of nothing I would rather be doing or anywhere I would rather be.

“This is just fantastic, to see the buzz and enjoyment all the volunteers are getting from making a difference this Christmas.”Chief Insp Carol Martin, who helped with the packing and distribution of the hampers, said: “We do quite a lot of work with Urban Outreach and each division collects a number of Christmas hampers.

“We thought that, rather than run something against this project, why not combine our efforts?

“As well as helping operationally today, we have also nominated some worthy recipients.”

Each interested organ-isation applied for the hampers by selecting worthy people they knew would substantially benefit from the help.

The hampers consisted of a goodies bag, with chocolates, biscuits, crackers and selection boxes, plus a bag of fresh fruit and vegetables, and chicken, sausages and cheese. Bolton Wanderers named Urban Outreach as their charity for 2013, and donated the collection from their recent Christmas carol service, raising more than £1,000 in total.

Chaplain Phil Mason said: “Urban Outreach is our nominated charity for this year and we were delighted to help them with this.

Jon Lord, chief executive of Bolton at Home, said: “We work with Urban Outreach all year, but a lot of our staff volunteer to do even more at Christmas. We are also delivering about 40 hampers to people we know on our estates.”