Locations and Lessons

This is what the maps in the email will look like
showing where all shoeboxes were distributed

After the Operation Christmas Child shoebox campaign 2011/2012, we were able to tell shoebox donors who gave their £2.50 shoebox donation online which country their shoeboxes went to. This proved very popular and was one of the most successful 'email blasts' we have ever done. We are going to send those donors another email this week. It will contain an update from that country and a map showing the various locations the shoeboxes reached in each country.

It was my job to read through the reports from our partners in each country to get quotes and stats for these emails. I also had to find the towns and villages where shoeboxes had been distributed across the 12 countries in eastern Europe, FSU and Africa. Google Maps came in very handy for this; I learned a new technical skill and improved my geography no end!

In some countries, such as Liberia, matching up the location our partners had described to the maps was a frustrating and time consuming task. I got there in the end and hopefully, our donors will enjoy this extra information and their map. I guess they could go into Google and click that little yellow man to zoom in to see the places for themselves.. such are the wonders of our technological world.

If you would like to take part in Operation Christmas Child this year and would like to know where your shoebox goes, here's where to start  and you can even make a shoebox from the comfort of your home without doing all that tedious shopping around and thinking up of ideas with the amazing 'Shoebox World' 

In Anticipation of Campaign 2012

Monday 24th September 2012 - I ventured out of the attic this morning to attend 2 local schools presenting assemblies - the first of the 2012 shoebox campaign.

The first one needed quite a lot of preparation as it was about International Co-operation and Understanding between countries. A couple of hours research and head scratching later one PowerPoint was produced for Year 12 of Castell Alun in the wonderfully named Hope village just outside Wrexham.

The students are doing their Welsh Baccalaureate, and, following my presentation, they were going to go ahead with ideas of their own, looking at ways to be global citizens. This links in to the work of Samaritan's Purse well and so it's all very admirable for the education of a future generation....

Before I went, I had spent some time renewing the wrapping paper on my shoeboxes. I furtled (technical term) about in the other end of my attic and found some gold starry paper. Next stage was to encourage old Mungo the teddy bear off the sofa and into the box and hope that no one notices that the sweets are far too old (I have been using the contents for demonstration purposes for some years now) to ever bring joy to a child....

Me & Mungo at Ysgol Estyn School, Hope

My second assembly was to little ones at Ysgol Estyn who were eager to tell me all about their own Christmases and seemed to be pretty pleased that they could take part this year. I remembered the lessons I learned from my early teaching days when asking an obvious question - "don't shout out..... Hands up" worked a treat!

So here's to a great campaign......