International Outreach to Children Marks a Decade of Delivering Hope
by Allie Martin
February 6, 2004
(AgapePress) - Millions of children in some of the poorest countries worldwide started the new year with hope thanks to the efforts of the Operation Christmas Child program and caring volunteers of all ages.This past December marked the 10th anniversary of the Samaritan's Purse project that collects gifts to be packaged and distributed to hurting children in 95 countries. Each needy child in the Operation Christmas Child program receives a shoebox filled with toys, hygiene items, and school supplies. In this most recent gift drive, millions of children, families, schools, churches, scout troops, and civic organizations worked tirelessly to fill the record 6.5 million shoeboxes with presents for needy children.
Randy Riddle, assistant director for Operation Christmas Child, says the shoeboxes can change children's lives. "These are small, insignificant items that we ask to go inside every shoebox gift," he says, "but what is meaningful is that every gift goes along with the Christmas story as it is told in the Bible, in the child's language -- and sometimes even down to the dialect. That story goes along with every shoebox gift."
Riddle says the annual outreach is an enormous undertaking that works primarily through churches, Christian schools, and other organizations across the U.S. and ten other collecting countries to prepare the gifts for international distribution. He points out that much of the effort is accomplished through individual volunteers, who pack shoeboxes with the collected gifts and then deliver each box to one of 1,500 drop-off locations around the U.S.
"All 50 states were represented this past year," Riddle notes.
More than 30 million shoebox gifts have been collected for Operation Christmas Child since it began in 1993. Although the national collection week for the effort is in November, volunteers may send completed boxes to the program's headquarters year-round.
