Families Join Effort To Send Boxes of Hope

U.S. kids have no time to waste in helping ensure that needy boys and girls around the world have a merrier holiday season. Sending hope to hurting children worldwide is a full-time, year-round effort that requires the contagious compassion of local Long Island families right now!

Operation Christmas Child, the world's largest Christmas project, is calling on local kids, families, churches, businesses, schools, scout troops, and civic organizations to join this massive effort to bring joy to children overseas suffering from disease, famine, war, terrorism, and natural disaster, through shoe box gifts.

Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts are simple but powerful ways to brighten the lives of suffering children in more than 90 countries.

"Last year, more than 235,000 children around the world joyfully opened shoe box gifts that came from the generous people of the Northeast," said Dana Stark, Regional Director for Operation Christmas Child. "For many of those children, it was the first gift they'd ever received."

HOW TO HELP:

Enlist families, churches, community groups, and businesses to take part in making shoe box gifts for needy children.

Fill shoe boxes with toys, necessity items, school supplies, candy, and a letter of encouragement.

Sign up to join thousands of Operation Christmas Child volunteers this fall, at one of hundreds of collection sites or one of six Processing Centers in the United States, to collect and prepare millions of shoe box gifts for travel to underprivileged children on six continents.

For more information on how to participate in Operation Christmas Child, call (518) 357-2284 or visit www.samaritanspurse.org. National Collection Week is Nov. 12-19; however, shoe box gifts are collected all year.

Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and hand-delivered more than 54 million shoe box gifts to hurting kids in some 120 countries.