On Christmas Eve four years ago, Sian Thomas spotted a homeless young man sitting on the pavement outside Burger King. She asked him if he was OK and they fell into conversation.

"I bought him a burger, and he started telling me about his life," she says. "I could have written his story before he told me.

"His mum and dad were alcoholics. He went into care and his placements kept breaking down. He kept saying: 'I'm such a bad person.'

"He was sleeping on the street, and that's where he was going to wake up on Christmas Day, alone.

"I walked away in tears. I went to do some last-minute food shopping in Waitrose and I just thought, how can it be like this?"

The Richmond Christmas Day Dinner is born "

The chance meeting inspired Sian, a nurse, to start an extraordinary project with one simple aim: that no young care leaver in the borough should have to be alone on Christmas Day.

"It gave me the fire in my belly to make a change. And I just thought - next year I'm going to do something for young people who have left care."

It was the start of Richmond Christmas Day Dinner, an award-winning volunteer project now in its fourth year, which aims to give some 50 young adult care leavers not just a nice Christmas Day, but a fantastic and unforgettable day that celebrates their character and resilience and creates plenty of positive memories to sustain them.

Each year thousands of young people leave care and many spend Christmas Day alone.

"Their Christmas is lonely, it's isolating, there is no Christmas food," says Sian. "They often end up spending the day on their own, in a hostel or a flat."

Sian's inspiration was the poet Lemn Sissay, a care leaver who founded the first Christmas Day Dinner initiative in 2013, hoping it would spread around the UK.

Having never even done any fundraising before, Sian got started by putting up signs everywhere she could think of, including Facebook and her local gym, inviting volunteers to an initial meeting.

She booked a room in York House and nervously waited."I was afraid that no one was going to turn up. But 22 people came," she remembers.

"On that first night I spoke about my vision. It was going to be a wonderful Christmas Day for care leavers celebrating what brilliant young people they are.

"After that we met fortnightly. I had never raised money before but I thought if we can't do it here in Richmond, in this affluent area and with the good people of the borough then where can we do it?"

The volunteers organised themselves into a steering group - an eclectic mix including social workers, a high court judge, young care leavers and marketing professionals - and sub groups to organise the food, guests, presents, venue, transport, communications, hosts and helpers, entertainment and finance.

"It was quite tricky the first year. We create the impossible so we started with zero pence," says Sian.

"We had a JustGiving page, we had cake sales, my gym did a 24-hour spin-a-thon, people started contributing £30 here and £20 there and the council agreed to put our project in their newsletter to all residents."

Support also came in from local business, including Bruce's Butchers who supplies the turkeys for the huge group meal, Sami's Barber Shop who volunteered to be a wrapping paper collection point, Positive digital marketing who helped with communications and took in the rapidly growing mountain of presents, Big Yellow Storage, Waitrose, Sandy's fishmongers, Co-op and many more.

The first Richmond Christmas Day Dinner in 2017 was hosted in Bushy Park Cricket Club. Some 50 young people, who between them brought along five of their own young children, were brought by taxi to the venue that had been beautifully decorated, with three donated Christmas trees.

The entertainment before lunch included a games wagon with PlayStations, hairdressers on hand to create fabulous hairstyles, silent disco, photo booth and nail bar.

This was followed by a traditional Christmas lunch, where guests, hosts and helpers ate together and then everyone sat down to watch a Christmas film.

Words from the happy guests

Whitney, 22, was one of the young people who joined the first event, after a youth worker put her name forward.

"I was 19. I didn't have any plans for Christmas. I didn't really know what I would be doing on Christmas Day, where I would be, who I would be with.

"Even though my foster families have been the nicest, they have their own families and you don't always feel you belong.

"In the past I had spent Christmas Day arguing with family or just wandering around. Not very good memories.

"But when I walked into that room there was no stigma. It was just about the connection really and how everyone showed that they cared. It was like a family that I had never had.

"Even though it was freezing outside it was really warm, friendly, happy. There was a free flow of conversation and laughs.

"The hosts and helpers showed empathy and it's completely different because they are not getting paid like social workers. They want to be there. For people to give up their day to help others is amazing.

"It made us forget what Christmas in the past had been.

"What I walked away with was memories, laughs and friends I still talk to over Facebook Messenger."

Sian describes that first event as "magical".

"The young people were blown away. They kept saying: 'You've given up your Christmas. And we said we haven't given up anything; this is where we want to be.

"We had sibling groups who had never spent Christmas Day together before.

"We gave one little girl, the daughter of one of our care leavers, a bike. We had tied balloons to it and I can remember her pedalling unsteadily up and down because she'd never had a bike before.

"There was one young man who had been saying all along he wasn't coming and he wasn't coming, because he was hoping to spend Christmas Day with his dad. Then at the last minute, on December 23, his dad cancelled on him and he came to us."

Whitney says that it's not even just the day itself, but having somewhere definite to spend Christmas Day helps care leavers with the entire festive period.

"When everyone is talking about Christmas and planning it and it's on the TV for weeks it's very daunting because you often don't know what position you will be in.

"Having Christmas Day Dinner means we've got something to look forward to as well."

Sian says that while she started the project, its success is thanks to the goodwill and generosity of local people, warm support from local businesses and the help of large numbers of volunteers who peel mountains of veg, take part in a huge wrap-a-thon in Clarendon Hall, York House, decorate, communicate, cook the meal, host, clear up and more.

Maia Honan is a managing partner of Positive, a Richmond-based digital marketing agency, who has been involved from the start. "We are called Positive and we aim to live up to our name!" she says.

"We have Positive Days when staff can go and do something for a local charity. I have quite a young team and I was looking for something they could visualise and get involved in.

"I saw a post from Paul Morgan, a communications director who volunteers to do the website, asking for 50 Beano annuals. And I thought this is it, this is the right thing for us to get stuck into.

"At the wrap-a-thon you could feel the crackle of positivity and excitement in the air. We have all these presents purchased by the gnerous folk of Richmond, and so many members of the community turn up, they bring their scissors and their Sellotape and it really is the spirit of Christmas."

This year things will be done a little differently because of Covid-19, with both the preparations and the event being adapted to be covid-safe.

Young people will have a hot dinner, hamper and a sack of presents delivered to them and they will be able to join in entertainment online, such as music and quizzes, and interact with others.

One young man on the steering group has asked for the volunteers who drop off the meal to make sure they stand a while and have a chat.

Young care leavers now nominate themselves and, of the 28 who have registered so far, the majority are from Richmond, with some from neighbouring Kingston and Hounslow.

Whitney, who having been a guest is now a host and helper, says: "The interaction will be different but to know that someone cares, that someone will knock on my door, you still get the same vibes, the energy, the purposeful meaning.

"The presents are amazing but it's not about presents.

"It gives me hope to know that people will take time out from their own families to create a day just for us. We know that we are not forgotten."

To find out about the many ways you can help support this year's Richmond Christmas Day Dinner visit www.christmasdayrichmond.com