Hitting the (Snowy) Ground Running in Belarus

It has been a few years since I have had the honour of giving out the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, but I write this after a short OCC trip to Minsk in Belarus. My companions on the trip were photographer Jonty Wilde and a well-known blogger called Michelle Pannell  our objective was to get stories and images to feedback to all our wonderful volunteers in the UK.

We were whisked off in a minibus to a town an hours drive away and were ushered into a Social Centre. These centres provide care for children who stay for 6 months whilst plans for their return to their parents or places with foster families are put into place. All of their stories are sadly similar with poor parenting and alcohol addiction being the source of most of their problems.

Photo: Jonty Wilde

Although all of the places in Belarus are decorated in a style quite alien to our UK tastes, it was a warm and friendly place and we were well received. The children came in and soon spotted the colourful shoeboxes piled up in the corner a quiet excitement built up in the room. So with no more delays than necessary, I told them through the translator where the boxes had come from and how children wanted to send them their love. And here it was in a box!

It's extraordinary what a few small gifts do - the children lifted the lids, smiled and seemed unable to comprehend that there were more gifts under the treasures they could see on the top. I knelt down and showed them how to explore.

Masha was one of the older girls at the centre and I looked through her box with her and later discovered her story as we were given refreshments with the staff who told us the stories behind each of those eager little faces.

Masha gets something of her own at last.
Photo: Jonty Wilde

Although she is well cared for at the centre, we heard that Masha much prefers the freedom she had at her family home, even though this freedom meant she had to cook and keep the house.  Masha never really knew her father and he retains no parental rights. Sadly, her mother has a severe drinking problem and due to this cannot work to support her children adequately.

They are currently looking for a foster family for Masha, as her mother has failed to make the necessary improvements to be able to have her home. Masha’s brother has commenced legal proceedings to sever the mother’s parental rights. Despite this, Masha loves her mother and maintains regular contact with her.

All too soon we felt it was time to go. Having been given a little song from the children Michelle and I did a quick rendition of 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' to a rather bemused audience!

As a footnote to this story; after lunch we were shown around the centre and saw the children again in their dormitory rooms. In their natural environment, away from the eyes of prying foreigners we really did see the joy and heard the laughter that the little box can bring.

ABC of OCC - T

Operation Christmas Child began with the thought of a journey to Romania. Transport was the first problem that the founders of OCC had in 1990 – how do we get to Romania? It’s a story that has often been told, but let’s tell it again. One of the team – Dai Hughes worked for a local radio station and an appeal was broadcast to Wrexham people to help. And help they did. Not only with money and goods, but transport. Haulage companies and drivers came forward to help. On 12^th Dec 1990, the first Operation Christmas Child convoy of vehicles and 17 volunteers, left for Romania containing toys, medical aid and those first shoeboxes.

Over the years that followed Europe was hit by another human catastrophe – war in the Balkans and once again Operation Christmas Child found itself looking at traumatised and needy children. Once again trucks were packed full of aid and shoeboxes and once again volunteer drivers gave of their time to deliver comfort to suffering children. The shoebox appeal itself had taken on a life of its own and people were responding to its simple premise – fill a box of gifts and we will take it to a child for you.

But we needed to get them there quickly and in 1992, the first airlift of aid took place using a Hercules plane from Hawarden Airport in North Wales to Zagreb. The following year the massive Antonov 124 (picutred right) eventually took off from Liverpool Airport – containing an unprecedented 60,000 shoeboxes. 

In 1994 Operation Christmas Child became part of the Christian Humanitarian aid organisation, Samaritan’s Purse and was exclusively about shoeboxes. A global organisation, its transport systems were already in place in far flung places in Asia and Africa. 

Shoeboxes were delivered not just in trucks and vans, but a variety of vehicles and creatures as they reaches more remote areas where poverty and need were a part of everyday life for people. So it was not unusual for helicopters, sledges, boats, camels, bikes and even elephants to be used to get the shoeboxes to where they were needed… I don’t suppose my fellow Welshmen in their transit vans expected that all those years ago…..

ABC of OCC - S

S is for Social Media. "Social Media? Why on earth would Operation Christmas Child want to get involved in Social Media?" Since my move to the communications department of Samaritan's Purse, I am a person who is fairly new to the concept of social networking. However, in the brief time I have been involved - I have to admit I am a convert.

Of course, I am aware that if you are reading this you are already someone who at least got a passing interest in using this platform for communication. I hope therefore that you can help us further by becoming part of our Social network community and maybe becoming an advocate for it. We have already been gaining great wins using Facebook, Twitter and You Tube which has resulted in real growth for the OCC campaign to new audiences - both in terms of general support and also real practical help from new volunteers.

We have already over 28,254 fans on the OCC UK Facebook page and every day there are many posts telling us about the ways that people are getting involved and messages of support. e.g.

Dawn Ellingham Martin Checked through our stuff and on track to make over 30 boxes. God is good x 

Pauline Palmer My boxes are all done except for the Christmas wrapping paper. I won't be chasing around to finish them this year!

Patricia Ayton Smith I've being doing a shoebox for about 6 years, and I've always done a boy's shoebox, probably because my only child is a boy, now aged nearly 10. This year, i've decided to do a girl's shoexbox, and today, i've bought some really lovely girlie things! I haven't finished yet, got some more shopping to do........

They are also amazing at finding bargains - which they share with each other:

Mandy Price I bought loads if Olympic merchandise for boxes when they were selling it cheap. Alex the lion toy was 50p in Tesco a few weeks ago too!

In addition some really great discussions take place and lots of issues are dealt with by our regular contributors. This enables us to 'steer' people in the right direction for diverse subjects such as the supply of shoeboxes, contents, size of boxes.

Meanwhile on Twitter, we have nearly 1,000 followers and find its a great way to share messages quickly about the progress of the campaign and to share photos like this one (above). We also have blogs - some specifically about OCC - like the one from Guildford and some from staunch supporters and like our Puppet Lady and this one from the attic of course!

So please, encourage others to support us this way - 'share' on Face Book rather than just 'like' and retweet rather than just open the link and read and it would be great if you could share this blog too! There are lots of who have still yet to know about OCC - so why not be a part of telling someone about it today? After all, it is just a few clicks away....

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' 

Barefoot in Minus Five Degrees

Part of my job with Samaritan's Purse involves reading the stories in the shoebox distribution reports and it reminds me how fortunate and grateful I am that I have such an interesting job, which perhaps makes a tiny difference in the world.  Some of the most harrowing stories of Operation Christmas Child distributions were from Romania, which is a country where poverty still bites hard particularly in rural areas. This one is an example written by our partners:


"Getting to the village of Mosoroasa in Romania is very difficult. You need to follow a rutted track and when it rains even this is impassable. These children live in very poor conditions, which are hard to imagine. They don’t have running water, electricity or the facilities for a normal life.

"But when we brought the shoeboxes, we could see extraordinary joy reflected in their faces. The shoeboxes are not just presents. For the poor families, the items in the shoeboxes cover some of the children’s needs for school and provide warmth and clothing.

Our partners continued, “Looking back, we do not remember the hard work or the obstacles we faced, but we do remember the faces of those children which radiated joy when they were holding the shoebox in their hands even though they were barefoot when it was -5 Celsius.

“We remember the tears of the mothers running down the muddy streets to thank us because we went to her poor house. It was a campaign in which God's grace upon us was fully manifested, we are blessed that we are part of the OCC team.”

If you would like to give a shoebox this year here's where to start - or you can even give a shoebox this year without leaving your armchair via 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......