Pack a box ONLINE
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Pack shoe boxes online and support the work that Samaritan’s Purse is doing around the world. Please consider packing additional shoe boxes online and they will be given to children in need in a developing country.
· You can select from a variety of gift items for a boy or girl in each designated age group
· Personalize each shoe box you pack with a photo and personal note
Operation Christmas Child goes online
Maxime Kouda is intrigued by the fact that some of the 90,000 gift-filled Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes he will help distribute over the next year in Senegal to needy children, most of them living in very primitive conditions, will have been donated by Canadians via the high-tech world of the Internet.
“I didn’t know shoe boxes could be given that (online) way,” says Kouda, a church pastor and head of the National Leadership Team in Senegal that coordinates Operation Christmas Child shoe box distributions throughout the west African nation. “It can help us increase the contribution from Canadians.”
Samaritan’s Purse Canada is encouraging Canadians to contribute 750,000 gift-filled shoe boxes in 2011 for needy children in Senegal, in Haiti (which will receive 75,000), and in several other west/central African and Latin American countries. Children of all faiths or no faith will receive them.
The vast majority of the boxes from Canadians will be donated the traditional way – by parents and children who’ve gone to stores and stocked up on school supplies, hygiene items, toys, and candy, then placed them in shoe boxes. Many children and parents have also added personal notes and photos before dropping off the packed boxes at their nearest collection center.
The 2011 deadline for shoeboxes provided this way was Nov. 27, and so it has passed. But Canadians can still be part of Operation Christmas Child by packing one or more boxes at www.samaritanspurse.ca.
After site visitors select the gender and age group of the child they want to receive the shoe box, a group of appropriate items will be automatically included. Canadians can personalize their box(es) by selecting more items, writing a personal note, and adding a photo. Volunteers and staff at Samaritan’s Purse ensure everything is packaged together properly and shipped to the “receiving” nations.
“It (packing boxes online) is a good idea,” Kouda says with a big smile. “I hope many Canadians use it.”
