Not too late, but not much time...
To fill an Operation Christmas Child Shoe Box for a child who will value every item.
This is such a great cause and manageable on an individual or family basis. All over Australia and New Zealand, communities are filling boxes. The Coromandel Peninsula is a very generous region and has been participating in the Operation Christmas Child project for many years.
The starting point is the distribution of empty shoe boxes to churches, schools, and community groups so that every household can fill a box or more than one. This has been going on for the past three months and now the end of October is drawing near and all the boxes need to be filed and brought back. There are specially made boxes with the logo on, or you can decorate a shoe box. Then you fill the box with good things for a child. Suggestions come with the box, and there is a place to tick designating the age and sex of the child for whom the box has been filled.
Robyn Balfour has organised the Operation Christmas Child for a number of years in Mercury Bay
where she distributes the boxes on request, and then each group or class, or household of individual brings them to a central point.
Some boxes left to fill: You can pick up a box from The Informer office In Monk Street (the churches have given all of their boxes away) has several boxes left for you to pick up and fill or you can decorate you own box. There is a suggestion list for what can go on each box for the age group you choose. You need to be quick now as the closing date is Friday 27 October. A donation of $12.50 is required for each box to cover freight costs and this can be transferred directly into the bank account no. on the literature that comes with the box, and which is also on their website.
Getting together to pack boxes: A community packing day has been organised for Sunday, 29 October at St Andrew’s By The Sea Church, 82 Albert Street, Whitianga from 11.30am that day.
These ‘prepared with love’ boxes will be freighted to so many places in the world where children have little of the basics, and they will be delivered around the Christmas period.
Last year New Zealand sent 13,740 boxes. Let’s increase this figure.
Enquiries: robyn.balfour2@hotmail.com