In Dillon, volunteers working to collect gifts for needy kids worldwide
Operation Christmas Child up and running
Comment: For those of you who have followed our Flat Stanley Project, our Flat Stanleys have made the news! In the picture, three of the children are holding our class's Flat Stanleys!
While many are busy polishing off leftover Halloween candy and planning how to brine the Thanksgiving turkey, folks at the Dillon Community Church are busy wrapping Christmas presents.
The gifts come in the form of empty shoe boxes filled with school supplies, stuffed animals, toys, hygiene items and notes of encouragement for needy kids overseas. The effort, dubbed Operation Christmas Child, is a year-round project of Samaritan's Purse, a religious-based organization that provides emergency relief around the world. Through Operation Christmas Child, 86 million gifts have been hand-delivered using whatever means necessary — including sea containers, boats, camels and dog sleds — to kids worldwide since 1993.
“This may be the only gift they get, not only this year, but possibly for their lifetime,” Kathryn Jo Pfeifer, collection effort coordinator in Dillon said. “It's an amazing opportunity to be able to know you're touching children's lives so far away.”
This is the fourth year the project has been coordinated at the church. They collected 294 boxes in 2009 and 405 in 2010. Last year, 117,466 boxes were collected statewide. “Each box made really counts,” Pfeifer said. “We are hoping we will continue the trend of increasing these numbers each year. We are encouraging people to do neighborhood parties, pizza parties and get together with friend and have some fun with this project while they put together boxes.”
Groups like the local cub scouts and girl scouts, classrooms and individual families like to get together to contribute, Pfeifer said. Just last week, about 90 people met at the church to decorate and stuff 66 boxes — Bass shoe outlet “has been wonderful with collecting shoe boxes” — with presents and supplies, and personal notes and pictures. Each gift is labeled for a boy or girl, and suitable age range.
Countries the gifts are sent to can be tracked online, by making a donation and printing out a tracking bar-code from the organization's website.
That's great for our kids,” Pfeifer said. “It's been fun for them to know where these boxes end up.” And while the individual child the present goes to can't be tracked, contributors do sometimes hear stories from volunteers who make the long trips to deliver the presents.
“They said the kids love the presents, love everything, but a lot of times what they dig through the box looking for is the picture and maybe the letter they get from the individual who made the box,” Pfeifer said.
Many times, volunteers report it's “the kid without shoes that gets the box that has the shoes in it.”
Volunteer Anneke Crowe wraps presents along with her children, who are 8, 6, 5 and 3. Her older two, who have been participating for the last few years, always get excited. “They say ‘it's time to go buy presents for other people, isn't this great?'” Crowe said. “It's rewarding to see that they understand why they're giving.”
While Crowe hasn't heard back personally from any of the children — along with a personal note, volunteers can include mailing addresses — her sister witnessed the impacts the gifts have last year on a trip to Mongolia.
“They were staying in a yurt. The children there were so excited to show my sister their things. When she went back to the little corner where they were sleeping, they pulled out their Operation Christmas Child boxes to show her,” Crowe said. “We wrap shoeboxes, and they save the wrapped shoeboxes. Their special treasures are in those.”
In Summit County, the due date for boxes is Nov. 20 so they can be delivered on time for a pre-holiday arrival. “So that is why we're celebrating Christmas early,” Pfeifer said.
1 comment:
I love it! Hadn't heard of flat Stanley before so I researched it. We will have to try it with our cousins!
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