Operation Christmas Child

I've been meaning to get involved with an organization called Samaritan's Purse and their Operation Christmas Child program for a while now... and finally made it happen this year for the first time. (Barely.) In a nutshell, the program has you pack a Christmas shoebox for a child in a developing country. You choose the gender and age bracket of the child you want to sponsor, pack the box, make a small financial contribution to cover the cost of shipping the box, and the rest is history. This seemed like a really good, tangible charity to get the kids involved in. There are lots of collection boxes at work for various programs at this time of year, and porch light campaigns and Salvation Army bellringers and the like, but the idea of having the kids do something for other kids just like them felt like it would drive home just how lucky they are. I worried a little about navigating the Santa issue (i.e. why does Santa give us such nice toys and not these kids?), but they didn't question that as much as they could have. Phew.

Since collection week in Canada is from November 21-27, and we weren't busy on Saturday morning, it was the perfect time for a shopping trip. We went to a department store and read over the list of recommended items a few times to provide some direction (no war toys, no food except for hard candy, hygiene and school supply items encouraged along with toys) and then each of the kids got a basket and free reign to pick out things for a child their own age. Well... ALMOST free reign. Liam did pretty well on his own but Mallory had to be coaxed into not turning her shoebox into Princess-palooza. All in all, they did very well.

We got the goods home and set about packing the boxes... and I have to say that we did a good job of estimating how much 'stuff' will fit into a shoebox, because they are both chock-full but the lids still fit on. We included a note to our recipients, taped a label to the top to identify the target child demographic, added some rubber bands to keep the lid secure, and I'll slip out on my lunch hour one day this week to drop the boxes at the local collection center.

Kids being kids, once the boxes were packed and the notes going inside composed, both Liam and Mallory wandered off and started a new activity, and I don't know how much more thought they will give to these boxes. But hopefully doing this once will evolve into a yearly event, and as the kids grow up and they understand more, I hope they will spend more time considering how much different their situations could be if they lived elsewhere in the world.