ABC of OCC - R

A child at the 'Patarat' community
which is on the city dump

R is for Romania. Where it all began. In December 1990, when Dave Cooke led the first convoy to Romania he only knew that he was to meet a man with a beard at a roadsign outside Cluj, Romania.

Sure enough, there he was. That man was Liviu Balas head of the newly formed Christian charity Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man"). Liviu took them to the orphanages and Ecce Homo has been taking shoeboxes to children in Romania ever since.

The work of Ecce Homo has brought about change for many poor and suffering children over the last 20 years, through Social Assistance, provision of Summer Camps, Children's Clubs and Women's Groups. It focuses on children's emotional recovery and developing their skills for an independent life.

Liviu Balas - our man in Romania

Plus, of course, they still distribute shoeboxes right across Romania (last year it was around 150,000!)  In 2006, Liviu told us the story of Claudiu who was only a few months old when he was abandoned by his mother and left in his grandparents care who were very needy themselves. One night, he was chopping wood with his grandfather and he saw the sparkling of decorated Christmas Trees standing in the windows of other houses. How he longed for such a tree and a warm home... and at that moment he lifted his head up to the sky saw a shooting star and made a wish that he wanted a box of toys as a Christmas gift. When his wish came true with the shoebox - he couldn't believe his eyes! The beautifully wrapped box that he received not only had toys, but also sweets. God's answer to his prayer that night will stay forever as a light in Claudiu's heart.

Liviu says "When you bring a smile to a child's face, you witness a miracle!" Please join us this year and tell your friends and family to make a shoebox - they really do change lives and attitudes.

ABC of OCC - Q

Q - might seems difficult, but no, it came quite easily. In Operation Christmas Child's World Q is obviously for questions. When the idea of putting toys into a shoebox to give to children overseas first came about I don't think anyone thought that there would be any need for further clarification. Get some toys and put into the box, right? Um, nooooo and in the 20 years of OCC I could probably write a book of the questions that folk have asked.

I loved answering those questions and never minded when an elderly lady would be on the phone for 20 minutes itemising everything she had put in her box and checking it was suitable. Because behind all those questions is real care and concern for children. People have seen suffering and want to put it right. But they want to put it right, right. So hence the questions. So keep on asking them - we don't mind - but read the leaflet first as the answers should be on there.



The Wacky Bus -
1993 - 1994

 The daftest question?  In the 1990s we were given an old bus by British Aerospace to take around schools to highlight the fact that we were going to fill the BIGgest plane in the World (the Antonov 124) with shoeboxes. A team of volunteers painted it in bright colours and it had a funny face on the front and 'wings' stuck on the side made of fibreglass. It probably had a top speed of 30 miles per hour with the wind behind it. However, it made quite an impact when it arrived and the children would often ask in wonder - "Does it fly?"



Fying high -
the Antonov 124 - Heavylift's spectacular plane used to
deliver shoeboxes until c. 2004



Perhaps the most memorable (but ironic) question was at the end of that campaign when after all the fuss - hundreds of children, press, TV interviews etc the plane developed a fault and could'nt take off. Miserbably we all clambered on the coach and some wag said, "What's big and does'nt fly?". 

In case you are wondering, the plane successfully took off at midnight and delivered 60,000 shoeboxes to Bosnia. The fault really was a one-off and we used the plane for many years to deliver shoeboxes thanks to a special relationship with HeavyLift Cargo Airlines.

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/

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....