Over the past three weeks, students at Oxford Middle School collected 442 shoe boxes filled to the brim with gifts for needy children as a part of the school’s annual participation in Operation Christmas Child.
“This is a good community service project for the kids to do,” said co-organizer and Life Skills Teacher Sarah Clark. “It’s just a group of kids helping other kids.”
The goal of Operation Christmas Child, a program within the charity organization Samaritan’s Purse, is to bring the joy of Christmas to children in need everywhere. Every year groups from the U.S., Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands collect shoe boxes filled with gifts to send around the world.
“As many times as I’ve seen the video promoting this program, I still cry,” said Clark. “The images of these children are amazing. For many of these kids, this is the only present they will get the whole year.”
“The kids here are so affected by this as well,” agreed co-organizer and paraprofessional Judy Royster.
Last year the program collected more than 5.4 million shoe boxes for distribution in over 90 countries. Each “gift box” could contain toys (cars, balls, dolls, crayons, yo-yos, toys that make noise with extra batteries, etc.), school supplies (pencils, pens, markers, stamps, writing pads, solar calculators), toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, soap) and treats like hard candy, lollipops, gum, sunglasses, flashlights, caps, socks and small books. Toy guns, toy war weapons, chocolate, perishable items, liquids of any kind, medicines, breakable items and used items were not allowed.
Operation Christmas Child works hard to get the gifts to the parts of the world where they are truly needed. The Samaritan’s Purse website states that this past year the organization used donkeys in Honduras, camels in Jordan and small boats in the Solomon Islands to get thousands of toys to children in isolated regions. “This is a remarkable program,” said Clark. “We’ve really tried to emphasize the community service aspect to the students.”
This is the fourth year that Oxford Middle School has participated in the program. Last year the students collected 261 boxes, almost half of this year’s amount.
“Every year it’s been a record year,” said Royster.
The students work together through their homerooms, and compete in a race for holiday treats given at the end of the three weeks.
“We strongly encourage them not to do this for what they get,” said Clark, “but for the other kids. The prizes at the end are just something special.”
The boxes from Oxford Middle School are transported to Mt. Morris, where they are then trucked down to Boone, North Carolina for distribution around the world.
“We had so many this year that we had to take two cars and a trailer to get them all to the center,” said Royster. “It was wonderful.”
“We are so proud of all the kids – they worked hard and gave so much.”
For more information on Operation Christmas Child, please go online to www.samaritanspurse.org.