Volunteers needed next week for Stratford’s Operation Christmas Child

As Stratford residents prepare to drop off shoeboxes filled with toys, toiletries and school supplies bound for children in need around the world, local organizers with Samaritan’s Purse’s annual Operation Christmas Child program are looking for volunteers to help load and deliver that Christmas magic.

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Having collected 1,641 shoeboxes from locals during national collection week last year, longtime Stratford drop-off center co-ordinator Julie Bolger is preparing for a similar haul during this year’s collection week from Nov. 13 to Nov. 19. However, to ensure that many shoeboxes make it from Stratford’s drop-off center at Community of Christ church on Forman Avenue to the region’s central drop-off center at Hope Lutheran Church in Kitchener, Bolger needs to find a truck to deliver them and a few extra pairs of hands to help her load.

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“We need some strong muscles to help with the loading of the boxes,” Bolger said. “It’s a big job because we pull in a lot of shoeboxes at our center but, with many hands, it doesn’t take long at all. It typically takes less than an hour to load a truck. …So if we have three or four or five volunteers, it goes quickly. Students can get community hours from this. This isn’t a job that just anyone can sign up for. It has got to be somebody that’s able to lift and move.

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Because each local drop-off center is responsible for moving the shoeboxes to the regional site, the “donated” truck needs to be fairly large, Bolger noted. The Stratford shoeboxes need to be in Kitchener some time by the Monday following the local collection week.

“We would have people to load and unload at each end, but we need that vehicle and a driver,” Bolger said.

Bolger said she expects a truck similar in size to a 20-foot moving truck would be big enough to transport all of the donated shoeboxes in one load, so she’s hoping someone with a vehicle that size – or someone who can pay for a rental – will step up to help out.

This year, shoeboxes packed by locals will go to children in need in one of nine different countries: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Senegal, El Salvador, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Philippines.

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“It’s the largest Christmas program of its kind in the world for kids, and it’s something that anyone of any age can participate in. Kids especially love doing this program,” Bolger said. “Parents will get involved with their kids. Grandparents will get their grandkids involved. They go shopping together because kids know what other kids like.

“You take the kids shopping, they pick out what they want to put in their box and a little boy or girl on the other side of the world will know that somebody cares about them. It’s sort of a global hug.”

And sometimes, if locals include a photo of their families, their names and their mailing addresses in their shoeboxes, Bolger said they may receive a photo of a child from somewhere in the world opening their shoebox and finding that joy inside.

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“My daughter got a letter in the mail a few years back. We packed a bunch of boxes and they ended up in West Africa. … My daughter had put her picture in with her address, her name, and she got a letter back from the volunteer (who delivered it) with a picture of the little boy who opened her box,” Bolger said. “He was there in the middle of this field, there were kids all around, and he had the box and she could see all the items that she packed.”

Stratford-area residents can drop off their Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes at 226 Forman Ave. in Stratford from 11 am to 1 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm during the weekends of collection week, and from 11 am to 1 pm on the Saturday and from noon to 2 pm on the Sunday.

To request an Operation Christmas Child shoebox, volunteer to help load the truck or to offer a truck and help deliver the shoeboxes to Kitchener, call or text Bolger at 519-949-1430. For more information on Operation Christmas Child, visit www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child.

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