Mo Fayose, 45, has hosted community Christmas dinners and delivered free meals to disabled and elderly people in Nottingham since 2016.
It’s now become an annual tradition; this year, she will bring together 50 people from the local area who don’t have anywhere else to turn during the holiday season.
Mo, along with her family, friends and volunteers, will also deliver 87 meals to people who are unable to leave their homes.
If you aren’t reaching for the tissues yet, it’s time to get them now.
During Christmas 2017, Mo became a local celebrity as the Nottingham Post shared a story about her wonderful initiative, along with a photo of Mo and an elderly lady named Sandra, who is now 73 years old.
Almost a year later, she received a call from a woman named Jackie, who told Mo that Sandra is her long-lost cousin. Jackie had searched far and wide for her family member, but had no luck until she spotted the photo of the pair.
This was the beginning of a family reunion of epic proportions.
‘I used to run a premises where people come for meals and things like that, and Sandra was referred to me by another person comes to my dinners,’ Mo tells us.
‘It was close to Christmas, so they were supporting her.
‘During Christmas 2017, the Nottingham Post did a picture of myself and her, and the following year in September, I received a call from a lady who said “Please, I Googled the name of my cousin that I’ve been looking for for many years and your picture with her came up. Are you still in touch with her?”
‘I was in New York at the time, but we agreed that we would speak more once I got back to the UK and I would speak with Sandra.’
At the time, Sandra didn’t have any known family members. Her mother and brother had died years earlier, and she lives alone in a flat provided by an independent living scheme for elderly people.
‘Sandra spoke to her cousin on the phone, and a few weeks later I went with her to London to meet her family,’ says Mo.
‘More of less the whole family was there, including people who live all over – someone came from Lincoln, others from Berkshire and different parts of London,. They all just came together to see her, and even took a picture of their family tree to give to Sandra when she arrived.’
The reunion had a very happy ending, and Sandra is over the moon about finally seeing her family again and meeting her cousin’s children.
‘It was so nice to see them, after all these years,’ Sandra tells Metro.co.uk.
‘It was great, so lovely. My family are coming up to Nottingham to see me, too, I don’t know when because I’ve been through a rough patch – I was recently run over and keep losing my energy.
‘But I’m going to Mo’s dinner again this year, I made friends there last year. They’re all nice people.’
Her cousin, Jackie, explains that the pair lost touch after her aunt, Sandra’s mum, died.
‘It was brilliant, it was really good because we’d lost track,’ her cousin Jackie, 72, tells Metro.co.uk.
‘As children, we used to spend a lot of time at my nan’s but we lost track of Sandra when her mum died. We’d been to the funeral but there was just no communication.
‘I’d been promised it from an in-law but I didn’t get that, but periodically I would go online and type her surname, it’s quite unusual.
‘So I’d just type in her name and it came up with this photograph of Sandra and Mo at this event that Mo is running for people with Sandra at Christmas.
‘All of my children were there [at the reunion], it was 10 of us altogether.
‘She’d met one of the cousins, Andrew, before – he’d been at her mum’s funeral – but she hadn’t met any of my children or my grandson.’
Sandra returned the following year to spend more time with her family – and she also celebrated her 73rd birthday with them in November, 2019.
Mo’s annual Christmas dinner is still a staple event in her calendar.
‘We pick up and drop off people all day’, Mo says.
‘We’ve got a couple of people who were house-bond for many years, as well as carers and wheelchair users. There are also couples who come along and single parents who would otherwise spend it alone.
‘This year, we are concentrating more on delivery because many people are housebound and need the meal, but also because it’s a chance for them to see someone that day apart from their carer.’
Mo will be doing most of the cooking herself, with the help of her son and two daughters, and also pays for most of the ingredients out of her own pocket.
‘I buy the food most of the time myself, it’s very expensive,’ she says.
‘I don’t rely on free donations and try to stay away from them, because we like to have everything the same for everybody. If we start to get donations from everybody, it’s quite difficult to count.
‘This year, we don’t just have a traditional Christmas meal, but we’ve got chicken, we’ve got beef and chicken curry, as well as Christmas pudding, banana and custard, jelly and ice cream, and more. All the deliveries will include a drink as well.
Mo funds most of the event herself, which can cost several thousand pounds.
‘The truth is I love it, and I’ve got a very, very lovely community. They chip in here and there, a few people have consistently donated money over the last few years – £50 or £100 when they can.
‘I don’t feel the constraints of the finances, not when you see that it makes people smile.’
Well, we know who is going to be on Santa’s nice list – forever.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/13/elderly-woman-reunited-long-lost-family-thanks-community-christmas-dinner-11900960/
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