It doesn’t take more than a shoebox to put a smile on a child’s face.
Operation Christmas Child is in full swing in Okotoks, with collection week coming up from Nov. 18 to 24 at the Okotoks Evangelical Free Church. Collection times and details can be found on the Operation Christmas Child – Foothills Area Facebook page.
Logistics co-ordinator Lisa Branch said people can get as creative as they want with their shoeboxes, with as many items as possible as long as they’re not on the banned list – like candy, food or drink, liquid hygiene items including toothpaste and lotions, vitamins, breakable items or aerosol cans.
“Otherwise, whatever you can fit in a box,” said Branch.
She said most boxes start with a “wow” gift, something like a deflated soccer ball or stuffed animal, and then they’re filled with school and craft supplies, small toys, and hygiene items appropriate for the age and gender.
Boxes can be packed for boys or girls, and age ranges are 2 to 4 years, 5 to 9 years, and 10 to 14 years old, she said.
The boxes are heading to eight different countries this year, including Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and five African countries, she said.
Branch got started with the program 20 years ago, when she and her husband moved from Ontario and learned about the shoeboxes.
“We’d never heard of anything like that, so as a young married couple we thought it would be great and we packed our first box,” she said.
They had the opportunity to volunteer at the Calgary processing centre that year and had their eyes opened.
At the processing centre, volunteers open the boxes to ensure no restricted items are inside, replacing anything that can’t be shipped with new items from what they’ve coined the “Shoebox Hospital.”
They’re then taped up and ready to ship.
“As we’re opening these boxes we realized what a horrible job we’d done packing our own boxes, that we hadn’t made good use of the space and we just got so many great ideas,” said Branch.
They were inspired to pack better boxes themselves, and took that energy into two decades of volunteering for Operation Christmas Child – even their eldest daughter’s birthday parties became shoebox-packing parties, she said.
Rather than receiving gifts from everyone in her class, they asked the party guests to bring donations for shoeboxes and people showed up with bags of items, she said.
“I think the first year we packed almost 20 boxes,” said Branch. “We found there’s just a lot of people who are really receptive to doing that.”
The biggest “Ah-ha” moment for the family of five came this past January, when they had the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica on a distribution trip. They were there for 10 days, and did shoebox deliveries nearly every morning and afternoon in different locations, she said.
“It just really struck me how it’s about more than just the box,” said Branch. “The box is a big part of it, but the guys are out playing soccer with the kids, and we’re blowing bubbles, skipping rope, colouring with the kids, just really spending time with the kids.
“For some of them they live in such difficult circumstance where they don’t really get to play or be a kid all the time.”
Samaritan’s Purse, which runs Operation Christmas Child, partners with Toms shoes. The shoe company promises to donate one pair of shoes for each one sold – and the Branch family got to see it first-hand.
They had the chance to help give out shoes while they were in Costa Rica.
“We’d try to figure out what size they were, because some of them were wearing hand-me-downs that were five sizes too big or too small, then we would get them a size and put it on,” said Branch. “It was giving them that dignity and that personal service.”
They also got to hear impact stories from children who had received shoeboxes in the past and had come to share their experiences.
One girl had been living in an orphanage, where all the girls in the house shared the same toothbrush. She was ecstatic when she opened her box and found her very own toothbrush.
“Now I pack one in every shoebox I send, because you never know where it’s going to end up,” said Branch.
They also heard about the power of the pencil.
In one small school, there was only one pencil for the entire classroom and it was passed up and down the rows of students. When a young girl received a package of what Branch described as cheap yellow pencils with erasers that don’t work very well, she was beyond excited.
“She treasured it because she said, ‘If I’m careful, I can make these pencils last for five years,’” said Branch. “For her, even though she had a box of all sorts of other things, it was the package of pencils that was so meaningful to her.
“Something we might think of as trivial or a small item might mean the world to someone over there.”
Shoeboxes can be picked up at Dit ‘n Dat, Cornerstone Chiropractic, École Percy Pegler School, Dr. Morris Gibson School, Meadow Ridge School, Momentum Physical Therapy, and the Evangelical Free Church.
They can also be filled online at https://packabox.samaritanspurse.ca/
