ABC of OCC - P

Romania, Dec 1990 Paul Wilcox in 1990 -
this is the very first image
taken of children with  OCC shoeboxes.

P is for photos. It has been my privilege over the years to be on the 'front line' as images of children joyously receiving their shoeboxes come into the OCC office. In the pre-digital age, the actual prints used to be very precious: I remember choosing prints from contact sheets, ordering many copies which were then sent to newspapers with a plea for them to return the print!

It has been a pleasure to see the work of wonderful photographers such as Jonty Wilde, David Lund, Nigel Dobson and many more.

In the digital age of course, it became conveniently easy to duplicate an image to share the joy of the child - almost instantly. However, the sheer number of images was almost a disadvantage, as everyone on OCC trips took many photos (usually of the same child). They were no longer restricted by the number of shots they had left on their film, so it was not unusual to get a CD containing over 1000 shots from one five-day trip which collated all the images taken by team members. Ploughing through these discs took hours, but of course, produced wonderful results.


Belarus, Dec 2010 Linda Thompson
A sick, abandoned child in hospital
loves his teddy


Now there are more changes as sites such as Facebook and Flickr mean that photographs are easily available to everyone. I have to keep a keen eye on Facebook along with everyone else to see the first images. This is wonderful, but also means that we cannot keep images exclusive to those who perhaps 'deserve' to see them first. The hardworking Area Co-ordinators and drivers who are the driving force behind getting the boxes to the children should perhaps be the first to see the first child get a box, but it is sadly no longer possible to do this. Such is progress: we re-balance our expectations to accommodate changes which can only be to the good.

You can see collections of OCC photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/samaritanspurseuk/