A Samaritan's Purse Report by Sandie Keetch

Love in a Box

Filling shoeboxes with small gifts for children and refugees in Eastern Europe has become a way of giving which has caught people’s imagination.

Thousands of Eastern Europeans are being given ‘love in a box’ at Christmas as Christian charities arrange mammoth campaigns that are changing the lives of  recipients.

One volunteer donated the shoebox his granddaughter made to a young girl in a Crimean orphanage. She was tied to a railway line when abandoned and was so traumatised she could not speak.  The shoebox marked a turning point as she began to talk again.

A handful of organisations – and a host of smaller ones – recruit willing givers to fill Christmas-wrapped shoeboxes with small toys and confectionery.

Refugees, the elderly and abandoned and sick and orphaned children, sample a taste of festive cheer as British folk give and give, improving on the number of shoeboxes collected each year.

Grateful tears and smiles from recipients come in the knowledge that someone, somewhere has taken the trouble to make a box just for them.  One little girl had been hoping and praying for a cassette recorder and when she opened her shoebox that is exactly what she found. For one elderly man, the shoebox campaign was a profound Christian witness and prompted him to ask for an Albanian Bible.

Shoeboxes with gifts are believed to have been sent in the First World War and the idea was promoted again in 1990 when international relief organisation, the Samaritan’s Purse launched Operation Christmas Child.

The British arm of the charity made an initial present drop of 3,000 which has since escalated to 727,606 with 20 regional distribution warehouses set up each year. Other charities also run similar schemes and the shoeboxes are airlifted or shipped and trucked to Eastern Europe.

The shoebox schemes also promote new friendships. Notes, photographs and Christmas cards are sometimes exchanged between giver and recipient with the aid of a charity interpreter.

Why have the shoebox appeals been successful?  “It is asking people to give to charity in a personal way rather than provide money,” explains Ruth Jones at the Samaritan’s Purse.  “A parent and child can go out together to buy gifts, which is seen as an antidote to Western materialism.”

The Samaritan’s Purse specialises in meeting the physical and spiritual needs of victims of war, poverty, natural disaster and disease in a bid to share God’s love. Providing shoeboxes began with two sisters of  the charity’s founder – a mother and children’s worker in Romania. They pledged to help impart kindness and generosity at Christmas to poverty-stricken Eastern Europeans.

Today that campaign is adopted by businesses, families and children, including Gold medallist Jonathan Edwards and his two children. Cabinet minister John Prescott is also a supporter.

Says Mr Prescott: “There is nothing like the wonder of seeing a child’s face light up on Christmas morning. Those donating shoeboxes will get more pleasure knowing they have made a young child’ Christmas happy than they will get from Christmas dinner.”

Partnership for Growth has been delivering shoeboxes to families in Romania since 1992 under its Link Romania scheme. The idea has developed from small beginnings to six 38 tonne truckloads of shoeboxes.

Rod Jarvis sent a shoebox full of wooden toys to the Romanian orphanage his friend visited. Enthusiastic response prompted him to send the contents of a Christmas stocking in a shoebox the following December to an under-privileged Romanian family. He encouraged family and friends to take his lead and now Rod is involved with the Link Romania scheme which saw 39,000 gifts collected, shipped and distributed to Romanian families abroad in 2000. 

“The boxes are given to a huge cross-section of groups and individuals including schools, elderly people’s homes, community and church groups, street children, prisoners’ families, hospital patients and so on,” says Glenda Jordan at Partnership Growth.

Delivery can be a gruelling operation as “some gifts are sent on the backs of horse-drawn carts in the depths of winter during freezing conditions,” she explained. “In one town people do not have money to buy shoes and one grandmother had spent her spare money on firewood so her shoebox provided gifts to share with her grandchildren.”

Shoeboxes often appear tailor-made. One woman received a sewing kit with needles, coloured threads and buttons. She was stunned, since as a dressmaker this was what she needed. And 30 elderly men and women “rejoiced like small children” when receiving boxes at an old people’s home.

Did you know that:

• Operation Christmas Child is the world’s largest children’s Christmas project.

• The 31 million shoe boxes collected since 1989, if stacked one atop another, would rise more than 300 times higher than Mount Everest.

• If all 31 million children who have received shoe boxes since 1989 stood hand in-hand, they would form a line stretching 21,400 miles – enough to reach more than three quarters of the way around the world.

• Operation Christmas Child has generated some 1,600 miles of smiles since 1993 – enough smiles to go from Lands End to John O’groats – and back!!

source: http://www.samaritanspurse.uk.com/occ/school-resource-cd.asp

Meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty,
famine, disease, and natural disaster
while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.