It's probably a little late to inspire other people to take part in Operation Christmas Child this year. The deadline for box drop off's in New Zealand is Monday 25th October. And given that's a public holiday it's likely most of the drop off centres would require them before that.
But I still wanted to share what we've done.
Quite a few years ago when I was working in Glasgow our department got together and took part in Operation Christmas Child. A couple of weeks ago I came across mention of the NZ branch of this project and decided to have another go.
Basically you wrap a shoebox with Christmas paper, pick a gender/age group your box will be for and then fill it up with a selection of gifts. You then drop the shoebox(es) at your local drop-off point (there's a list on the website) and they are sent to underprivileged children who wouldn't normally get Christmas presents. It's run by a Christian organisation but you do not need to be part of the Christian church to join in.
More information can be found on the website and this page gives specific instructions for filling up the boxes.
Back in Scotland a group of us managed to fill a few boxes between us. This year I stuck to just one box and picked 'Boy' given I had a little boy this year! I was going to pick the youngest age so it would be closest to my little boy but that age group is 2-4 years and so many of the toys I was looking at weren't suitable for children under the age 3 so I went for mid-ground and picked the 5-9 years category instead.
In our box we included: stickers, crayons, colouring pencils, colouring book, notepads, sticky plasters, toothbrush, soap (coconut scented - it smells yummy!), a hat, some bouncy balls and some toy trucks.
It probably only cost about $20-25 to fill the box but it was so much fun to put it all together. We also made a small donation (they request $9) to go towards the delivery costs.
The last thing we added was a Christmas card with a wee message about why we had put the box together. I dropped it off at our local drop-off point today and it's exciting to know it will soon be on it's way to a boy aged 5-9 years who will enjoy receiving our parcel.
I hope to do this every year and once my boy gets a little older hopefully he will enjoy helping me decide what to put in it and include his own letter for the recipient.
What a gorgeous idea! I wish I had known about this as I would love to put a box together. Definitely next year!
ReplyDeleteIt's great isn't it? So much fun picking and choosing what to put in. It's relatively cheap and doesn't take too long to put together but at the same time feels a bit more 'involved' than just donating money. I will try and post about it earlier next year :-)
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