ABC of OCC - O




Children in Crimea receiving shoeboxes this week.
Photo: David Lund 

  O is for Operation Christmas Child - very suitable as this is my last post before Christmas! It has been a tough campaign this year for our volunteers. The dreadful weather has caused many problems - vans getting stuck in the snow, cold conditions in the warehouses and the delay of trucks. One team in the South had their truck cancelled four times! When you have your head down boxes, arranging transport doing all the paperwork it is easy to forget exactly WHY you are doing it.

Perhaps everyone has a different response to that question. Some do it as a demonstration of their faith, some like the company and friendly atmosphere and others just like messing about with roller trucks! But at the heart of this is the totally unselfish need that people have to help others - of showing God's love in a practical way.

So what is the impact of Operation Christmas Child? CNN recently published story about sixteen-year-old Valery Bianco and his 13-year-old sister Marina Bianco who know firsthand what shoeboxes could mean to a child. "I was almost 10 when I received my shoe box, and it was touching to receive a gift as an orphan, someone people don't care about," Valery says.
Those shoe boxes were the first gifts that Valery and Marina received during their life at a Russian orphanage. When they were sent to the orphanage years earlier, they were not allowed to bring any possessions with them. Birthdays were not celebrated and there were no toys to be found on Christmas morning. All the two siblings had was each other."I would see him fight with other boys and I would run into my room and hope he was OK. There were so many fights," Marina said.

For Marina, the shoebox came when she needed it the most. She was 6 years old when it arrived. At that point, she was becoming very angry, finding herself in a lot of fights as well, she started believing that she had nothing to fight for. "I did not care what happened to me," Marina said. "People would want to beat up on me. I thought, well that is what life is. But when I received the shoebox, I realized that someone did care for me in the world, and I thought that I should live a good life."

Her shoebox had the simplest items: A small towel, a few toiletries, a colouring book and stickers and a cuddly toy. For Marina, these possessions meant she was worth something. "I realized you can be anyone you want, that you can control your own life," Marina said.

They have now been adopted and live in the USA and are making shoeboxes themselves for others. For the full story see http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/12/17/iyw.shoebox.gift/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Happy Christmas everyone.

ABC of OCC - N





Kenya 2007 - photo: David Lund

N is for need. On 12th December 1990 the first convoy of vehicles left Wrexham Guildhall under the name Operation Christmas Child. This was after the need of children in Romania was transmitted into our comfortable homes after the revolution. At a recent Celebration Service to mark this anniversary one of the speakers Steve Robinson said "It is not right that we have to deliver gifts to children or that there are people suffering all over the world." it would be a wonderful and fair world indeed if there was were no needy people and Humanitarian Aid did not have to exist. But need there is.

In the world today over 22,000 children die every day - that is 1 child dying every 4 seconds or 15 children dying every minute.

UNICEF tell us that
• 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation
• 1 billion children are deprived of one or more services essential to survival and development
• 148 million under 5s in developing regions are underweight for their age
• 101 million children are not attending primary school, with more girls than boys missing out
• 8 million children worldwide died before their 5th birthday in 2009
• 2 million children under 15 are living with HIV

Solving these issues is seemingly an impossible task, but we have to keep trying. Samaritan's Purse work all over the world delivering aid, helping bring safe clean water and seeing to the needs of the poor. Shoeboxes in themselves don't save lives or feed the hungry, but they do bring hope, which can change lives. While the need of people is still there, there will always be a need for charities like Samaritan's Purse.

ABC of OCC- M

Children in Belraus entertaining the OCC team
before a distribution of shoeboxes

M is for Music. There is so much I can say about OCC and music. From the music that has been written about the shoeboxes as people become inspired by the work - '(the best for me was Melisa Bester's Love in a Box' ) - to the music that echoes around the OCC warehouses as the volunteers sing and dance their way through the checking of the boxes (sometimes!)

Overseas, there's the music that welcomes us as we go into schools to deliver the shoeboxes. As part of a huge welcome to us, we have been sung traditional folk music in all the countries that we visit, fun nursery rhymes by little ones in their own languages and invited to dance in joyous thanksgiving events for the shoeboxes. Perhaps best of all, the rousing choruses of the children in Kenya and Liberia as they bang out rhythms on the shoeboxes in a frenzy of anticipation before they open their boxes.

Where OCC and music came together in sweet harmony was back in Kosova in 2006, when Miroslav, a child living in a poor community with his parents opened a box and drew out a little guitar. This brought tears to the father's eyes. He explained that he had been a musician, but could no longer perform as his instruments had been sold long ago to feed the family. I sometimes wonder whether Miroslav was ever inspired to take up music because of the shoebox....

ABC of OCC - L

L is for love...of course. From the early days of OCC, it was noticed that the contents of the box were greater than the sum of its parts. There was something else inside. It was almost as though those poor needy children in Romania were touched by something they had never felt before - the love and care that went into the box when it was made.

In preparation for a Celebration Service we are having in Wrexham this Sunday - (12th December 1990 is when the first operation Christmas Child Convoy left) I have been talking to some of the people who visited orphanages in Romania after the revolution and reading the old newspaper reports abot OCC. To say that the team were traumatised doesn't come close, some just could not cope with seeing children who were completely unloved and uncared for. Paul Wilcox who worked for the Wrexham Mail at the time wrote:

“Although I’d mentally prepared myself for this, it was beyond all my imaginations. There wasn’t one of us who didn’t break down in tears at one point or another. We saw rooms full of kids starved of affection and love. The children had no stimulation at all and when we gave them the shoeboxes their faces just lit up. One of the kids didn’t know what to do with the box and as the driver took things out of the box, the child became so overwhelmed that his legs gave way and he just fainted."

In 2008, we were giving shoeboxes out in an orphanage in Belarus. Although short of resources these places are staffed by ladies who really care for the children who do their best - (Sting once sang The Russians Love Their Children Too). There was a little girl there who was very quiet and we were told that her mother had brought her to the place when she was 18 months old saying that she would be back soon to pick her up. That was 3 years ago and little Misha still waits... but at least this Christmas she had a present with a little note inside that told her she was loved....

ABC of OCC - K

SP's Alan Cutting took this wonderful picture of
a child in Kyrgyzstan during the 2008 distribution

K is for Kyrgyzstan - which is one of the recipients of the shoeboxes this year. It is a poor, mountainous country with a predominantly agricultural economy. The country has suffered political upheaval and severe ethnic unrest in recent months.

Mountain ranges make it difficult for the team to reach out to parts of the country during winter, particularly in the south, however, last year we were able to send 66,202 shoeboxes to this needy country with the most beautiful children - although it can take up to 20 days for a container to get there.

When Chris Roberts, one of SP's Regional Managers went to Kyrgyzstan in the 2008/09 campaign he met a little girl he could'nt forget.

"Gula is twelve years old and lives with her older brother and baby sister in a small town in Kyrgyzstan. Due to her brother's illness, she takes on her mothers duties when she is out and when we call around with some shoeboxes she is preparing the evening meal. When she starts to open her box and take things out she has her head bowed and becomes very quiet.

'My mother has never been able to buy me things like this,' she says looking up with tears welling up in her eyes. 'She would have if she could'.

"We respond through the translator and she nods, smiling in response. Even as we leave, ten minutes later, it is clear that she is having great difficulty keeping her emotions in check".
Don't forget that you can still make a shoebox via Shoebox World - http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/shoeboxworld/

ABC of OCC - J

The team at Wrexham preparing a load in 2009

J is for journey. The 2010 shoeboxes are on their way from warehouses across the UK; the first load left Melksham bound for Liberia on 12th November.

To prepare the shoeboxes for their journey they are checked and sealed with special Samaritan's Purse tape and carefully packed into cartons. Each carton has the same category of shoebox that is, Boy or Girl in one of the age categories. This information is put on the outside so that our partners overseas can easily identify what the carton contains. This method has been developed over the many years of consulting our partners about what works best for them.

Each load is around 10,000 shoeboxes and strong and able bodied volunteers gather at the warehouses to ensure that the load is packed to ensure the maximum number of shoeboxes are on board - for this reason we don't use pallets as they take up too much valuable space. Paperwork is a vital part of this process so that what is on the truck matched what is on the manifest to ensure smooth passage through customs. Some are put in containers - these are bound for the further flung places such as Swaziland. There is a celebratory feeling as the volunteers load the finished product - always the result of many months hard work.

The shoebox's journey is long and it may take 4 or 5 days to reach a country in Eastern Europe and even longer for a container to get overseas. But they all get there and waiting for them at the other end is an anxious partner ready to deliver them straight into the waiting hands of needy children in his beloved country.

ABC of OCC - I

I is for integrity - Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organisation which is greatly respected in all the countries across the world in which it works. The Operation Christmas Child project is open to people from all walks of life, faith, race and ethnic background and the boxes are given to needy children unconditionally. Over many years Samaritan’s Purse has provided aid to suffering people of many different religions, including Muslims, in countries throughout the world. They do not let their religious beliefs be a barrier; indeed, it encourages them to reach out and help anyone in need of assistance.

Samaritan’s Purse was active in Iraq, providing supplies and equipment to Al-Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad. To quote its director, Dr Mahdi Jasim Moosa, who is a Muslim, interviewed about Samaritan’s Purse: "They were very easy to work with. Please, tell them we're so grateful. They said they would be back - and we hope they come back. Workers with Samaritan’s Purse didn’t preach or attempt to convert people".

It is upsetting sometimes to see that the good work that Samaritans' Purse does is undermined by rumour and speculation by people who hide behind websites to tell their lies. I speak as someone who has seen their good work at first hand and I am always fully comfortable with what SP do. There! off my soap box now...

ABC of OCC - H

H is for Haiti. In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, Samaritan's Purse sent aid and personnel to help the people rebuild their lives. Over the summer, UK volunteers - experienced and trained for the work - Peter Ivermee from Christchurch and Ralph Springett from Maldon in Essex, went out with SP to work in the hardest hit areas around Cite Soliel. Samaritan's Purse workers are still in Haiti and, in the face of this latest emergency, are among those working to try to prevent the spread of the disease.

Despite the current problems, Peter & Ralph, who run Operation Christmas Child warehouses in their local areas, are gathering thousands of shoeboxes to send to the children of Haiti. It seems fitting in this 20th year of Operation Christmas child that some of the most needy children in the world will again be the beneficiaries of these special boxes of joy. Ralph told me, "The children of Haiti need boxes more than they ever did.". Its not too late to give a shoebox........ http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/

ABC of OCC - G

G is for guns. A real no-no in OCC world....

Most people are aware that Operation Christmas Child started when Dave Cooke saw the plight of Romanian orphans in 1990 - (it is twenty years old this year). But very quickly after that first convoy OCC the charity started to take aid to other countries. In 1992, trucks of aid went to both Croatia and Serbia as the rumblings of a bloody conflict had begun. OCC was born at a time of great need and found itself delivering, not just to neglected children in Romania's orphanages, but also to children traumatised by war.
(photo right: by Phil Dawes, Hull Daily Mail, Bosnia 2003)

Here is a snippet from an early 1993 OCC newsletter:

"Two thousand children had been waiting for six hours in the cold. But that was the least of their worries in the madness of war. They’d been told that ‘packets’ (shoeboxes) were coming for their children and waiting was easy. The boxes had to be smuggled across the river in small boats as the bridge had been blown away. The joy and anticipation was tinged with an air of fear and panic in case a child missed out. The school yard where the children waited in Orsaje had witnessed the death of sixteen children from daily shelling. The team watched as the desperate refugee children received their boxes and ran to their parents shaking with sheer joy. Hardened soldiers put down their weapons and cried as they opened the gifts with their own children. Messages of love, new toys books and crayons appeared from nowhere. The same scenes were repeated right across the former Yugoslavia. Ivan Vacek, one of OCC’s partners said, “These kids have had nothing for so long. This is more important to them than even the food convoys. What a wonderful way to share the message of the first Christmas Child.”

Although that particular conflict is over, we do still deliver shoeboxes to children affected by war, so please, avoid anything to do with the military in the shoeboxes- even camouflage gear.

ABC of OCC - F

F is for Facebook. Hmmm, some of our supporters have wondered why we have an OCC UK page on Facebook with all the reports in the press about cyber bullying, loss of privacy and inappropriate usage on Social Networking sites. I am aware that most people reading this will have come to it via Facebook, but I would ask you to encourage others to visit our site.

When OCC started this year we had around 8,000 followers - we have a staff member now who looks after the OCC Facebook page so it is monitored so that immediate responses to queries can be made. He also keeps an eye on any negative and untrue stories about OCC which appear anywhere on the web which enables us to make a swift correction. The current count of 'friends' on our site is now well over 12,000 and rising everyday. We can count how many people view the comments and all the photos, films and quips are a real encouragement to staff & volunteers alike.

There may be some who use Facebook but don't want to visit our site - who may be (like me) not too sure who can see what. They may think that if they put a comment onto it OCC will be able to view their holiday snaps! It doesn't work like that - but we know that there a some wonderful as yet 'unsung heroes' out there who deserve a mention and Facebook is a great place to talk about their work - not just for their benefit but to give others ideas too. So ask them to visit http://www.facebook.com/occuk or if they won't, take a photo (and with their permission) tell us about the great OCC things that are happening!

An ABC of OCC - E

 E is for efficiency - it is at this time of year that you realised just what a complex event Operation Christmas Child is. This week the boxes will begin to arrive at Drop Off Points and schools where they pile up in brightly coloured mountains in corridors and sports halls. So what happens next? Just HOW do the gifts get from the school into the hands of a needy child?

The answer is the combined efficiency of some very talented and committed volunteers - with a little help from SP staff. For administration purposes, Samaritan's Purse has split the UK into 9 Regions each of which has a Regional Manager who looks after the Area Teams with the Region. The Area Teams are run by and for volunteers and there are around 150 of these teams across the UK. (pictured above the team in Jarrow 2007)

The charity has only a few full time warehouses so Area Teams have to source free premises and set them up as full working warehouses - with all the health and safety factors considered. Tables, chairs, roller trucks, cages pallets all come out of storage from garages, gardens sheds & spare bedrooms. Posters are put up and signing tables set-up. Then they are ready to roll!

The volunteers phone every school, church and organisation who has ordered leaflets to organise the collections. OCC drivers are out in all weathers from very early in the morning and they are very often the last to arrive back to the warehouse and yes, they load each shoebox on and each shoebox off - sometimes hundreds of times. The volunteers at the warehouse check every box to ensure it is right for the country it is going to load them into cartons. When they have enough for a load (around 10,000-although sometime part loads are sent) a truck is ordered from SP's brilliant Logistics Manager. (Pictured right volunteers at Harnham Free Church nr Salisbury)

The overseas partner is alerted that the truck of shoeboxes is on its way and gets their own volunteers ready to unload them the other end. The overseas partner has already identified the children who will get the boxes and events will have been organised for the distribution of the boxes. (left pictured is Nicolai in Belarus - photo Jonty Wilde). So efficient is the OCC that we begin to send our first shoeboxes out the 2nd week in November and well over 1 million are delivered to over 12 countries by January. Amazing!

An ABC of OCC - D

D is for delight -it's difficult for us to imagine the delight needy children feel when they receive a shoebox. Here in the UK, our children get so much and not a birthday or a Christmas goes by without them getting more stocks of toys and electronic equipment to pack into their own bedrooms.

Imagine being a child who has never had the luxury of their own room; or who has to share a toothbrush with eleven others in their dormitory. Or that you had never been given anything - other than food and water to keep you alive.  Imagine then that you were given something of your own. It has a lid and it is yours and all the things within it...you are then beginning to understand the Power of the Shoebox.

In 1999, a Samaritan's Purse team were in Honduras where Hurrican Mitch had struck the year before and rendered many people homeless and in great need. After distributing shoeboxes to the children, a pastor among the team was moved to write this poem I use it a lot and I thought I would share it with you:

Our Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all our lives, we come before you today to pray for the children;

Who sneak lollipops before supper,

Who erase holes in math’s workbooks,

Who can never find their shoes.

                                               

And we pray for those who stare at photographs from behind barbed wire,

Who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of trainers,

Who never “counted potatoes”,

Who were born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,

Who never go to the circus,

Who live their lives in an X-rated world.

We pray for children, who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray for those who never get dessert,

Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

Who watch their parents watch them die,

Who can’t find any bread to steal,

Who don’t have any rooms to clean up,

Whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s refrigerator,

Whose monsters are very, very real.

We pray for children, who spend all their pocket money before Tuesday,

Who throw tantrums in the supermarket and pick at their food,

Who like ghost stories,

Who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the bath,

Who get visits from the tooth fairy,

Who don’t like to be kissed outside school,

Who squirm in church and scream into the phone,

Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those, whose nightmares come in the daytime,

Who will eat anything their hands can find,

Who have never seen a dentist,

Who aren’t spoiled by anybody,

Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep.

Who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,

For children we do not allow to be born and for those who are born but not allowed to truly live,

For those we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance,

For those we smother and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

We pray for all those children whom Jesus loves and especially for those who haven’t heard.

O dear God, forgive us. Amen

An ABC of OCC - C

C is for craziness. Over the years, we have had so many wonderful things donated in the shoeboxes - people are so generous, but there have been some very strange ones too. There was the time in the early days when a guy enthusiastically brought down bags of clothes to for us to send to Romanian orphans only to come back moments later in a panic when he realised he had left his weeks laundry too.

We once had a whole egg and a pack of kippers and it is not unusual to have jars of mayonnaise and tins of soup in shoeboxes. While you can see why someone might think that a needy person might want soup, more puzzling was the TV remote control  - if it was a mistake it must have caused some family arguments! We also struggled to find a reason why someone might send a microwave manual to a needy child for Christmas!

But perhaps the strangest was the dead budgie found in Chesterfield some years ago. After some thought we realised that the bird had been put into the shoebox for burial and there had been a dreadful mix up.....

An ABC of OCC - B

B is for babies..it is great that folk are so thoughtful when it comes to giving shoeboxes and many ask us why we don't ask for baby boxes. Indeed, some folk just go ahead and make them! However, there are real reasons why we don't appeal for them. In the early days of OCC, we did used to collect and send baby boxes, but our partners told us that they found that they were often left over at the end of a distribution and they had to go out and deliver them by hand, which took time and of course, depleted funds. It was concluded that mothers did not want to bring the babies out in the cold weather and also, in war-torn countries there just weren't that many babies about. It is also an ironic fact that the smallest humans on the planet need huge amounts of 'stuff'. So one nappy in a shoebox won't make a huge amount of difference.


If you have sent a baby box in the past it would still have been given to a baby, but we do ask that you send only to the 2-4, 5-9 &10-14 age ranges as recommended on the leaflet.

(I was sorely tempted to illustrate this post with a picture of the most beautiful baby on the planet, my granddaughter - 4 month old Martha. But this one taken in 2007 by June Vasey in East Lothian is probably more appropriate!)

Getting the money together...

How many shoeboxes am I going to do this year? Well, it depends on how much money I can get together -as each box costs £2.50. 

But look what I saw when I got into my car this afternoon....that's 10p for a start. In our house loose change seems to fall out of pockets and roll under furniture never to be seen again (except when I clean things, which is'nt very often), so perhaps I should start some serious dusting.

Perhaps if I collect money lying around our house - I will save enough for a few shoeboxes. I'll add every 5p I get to the fund too. Also, I have heard about a great fundraiser called 'Count Your Blessings'...that should beef up my funds a bit!

OCC 20 Years Ago

I have been asked to create a PowerPoint presentation on the 20th Anniversary of OCC - so I have again been digging through the archives. It reminded me of a conversation I had with one of the members of that first convoy who told me that the shoeboxes almost didn't happen!

Dave Cooke had the initial idea to take a vehicle of aid to Romania after the pictures of the orphanages were shown on the TV in 1990. His friends rolled their sleeves up and appealed for aid and it all came flooding in thanks to appeal on local radio. Dave's sister, Jan, however thought that it would be a great idea for her own children - Alex & Peter (all grown up now!) to put presents into a box - rather than the donations going into a big anonymous pile. Thus the shoebox idea was born. She told co-founder Dai Hughes who being 'media savvy' could see what a great idea it was and encouraged the first collection of shoeboxes.

Some of the other team members however, felt that shoeboxes would take up too much room and not allow for what they saw as more important aid such as medical equipment. A great deal of negotiation and 'heated debates' went on before it was agreed that the boxes would go. As it happens, so many trucks were donated that there was room for everything. On such small details whole movements are founded....81 million children who have received shoeboxes since are glad that they decided to put those little boxes on board!

An ABC of OCC - A

A is for Animals. Animals - (not real ones of course) are really popular in the shoeboxes under the category of 'something to love' . We have seen teenage boys crumble into gooey smiles when they find a cuddly teddy in their boxes - so its good to find some sort of cuddly animal to put into your shoebox. One thing that we wouldn't recommend however, are realistic looking snakes or spiders - they could really frighten a small child in Africa - (they frighten me.... )

A cause of some debate last year was how far this should be taken - does this include plastic lions and tigers? Perhaps not advisable for the hot countries, but I would'nt extend that to exclude cartoon elephants or Baloo the bear type toys - if it does'nt look like its wild counterpart - put it in.

Busy Week

On Wednesday I did a presentation to 300 pupils at a local school Castell Alun.  To do this I had to bring 'Mungo' out from his sleepy bed and ask him to perform again. Mungo is actually my daughter Tali's bear who thought he could blissfully retire since she'd left home. But I discovered that he he was a real 'looky likey' for the OCC storybook Mungo - so he was pressed into service. If you've not seen the Mungo Story Book I would urge you to get a copy - its really great for the young ones and big kids like me!

Stop Press

So here we go, my first posting on a new blog - News from the Attic. I chose this title because wherever I go for Samaritan's Purse people who read the Stop Press ask me how things are going in the attic. Well, from here things are fine. There is much to be done however and I am currently writing the next edition, so this will be a short post - (see? I  am getting the hang of the blogging lingo already!)

Just to let you know what I intend to achieve with this blog. I want you to know about what everyone else in the UK is doing - swapping good ideas and heart lifting stories. There will be links to the vast array of OCC photos and stories that I have collected over my 17 years with the charity. I also want to publish the 'ABC of OCC' a quirky look at OCC using the alphabet as our guide. So I hope you will join me as together we approach OCC 2010 - its going to be a very special year.....