Learning How To Give

This month is Thanksgiving, right? Which just so happens to be a compound word. Yup, dragged that word out of my junior high English memory. A time to give thanks. I just so happened to finish writing a story about one of the biggest giving projects in the world. Funny, I'd never heard of it until now. There is something wrong with this picture. Regardless, I decided to jump on the giving bandwagon and get the girls involved.

The giving project you ask? Operation Christmas Child. In a nutshell, you buy simple toys, school supplies, hygiene products and cram them into a shoe box to send to another child in another country. From my interviews, I learned that over 500,000 volunteers worldwide hand-deliver around 8 million shoe box gifts to hurting kids around the world. This year the focus will be on the children in Haiti as well as children in 100 other countries.

I decided that my girls needed to learn how to think about others this season and decided to do a box of our own. While we were driving to the dollar store on Saturday so they could spend some of their recently acquired money, I talked to them about spending some of their dollars to help fill a box for another little girl who has nothing in a different country. One daughter was more than thrilled to help out. The other daughter took a little convincing, but once we started picking things out at the store, she began warming up to the idea.

One of the gals I spoke to helped deliver some of the boxes in Jamaica. Once they got past the resort areas, their team realized how devastating life was for the children there. They were living in slums and school was held at a compound surrounded by armed guards to protect them from the gang wars. The kids had nothing in the way of school supplies, so they had no way to do their school work. The kids there were so excited to get paper from the Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes, as well as flip flops to cover their bare feet, and a luxury - a toothbrush that one family shared as a family since they had none.

I was touched by the stories I heard while writing my story and decided we had to participate. One of the fun parts is the program encourages you to include your photo and a letter, and in some cases, the kids receiving the boxes write back. I hope my kids have learned something from the experience because I certainly did.

If any of you are interested in participating, the official collection week is Nov. 15 - 21. There are collection sites all over the country. Click here for more details http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/Pack_A_Shoe_Box/