Back to school is a time to help Third World kids

MIDDLETOWN — By adding some items to their back-to-school shopping lists and saving the shoe boxes from their new shoes, Middletown-area kids are joining the effort to share a powerful message of hope with some 8 million disadvantaged children in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Through Operation Christmas Child, billed as the world's largest Christmas project, families kick off the school year with a lesson about the impact of giving back.

"Many of our families start early and hit up the back-to-school sales with their kids," Leigh Fisher, Mid-Atlantic director for Operation Christmas Child, said in a press release.

"It's such a great teaching tool. Kids realize that items we easily take for granted, like pencils and paper, can mean that some child on the other side of the globe gets to go to school."

Volunteers for North Carolina-based Operation Christmas Child, a project of international relief organization Samaritan's Purse, fill shoe boxes with toys, school supplies, candy and often add handwritten notes of encouragement.

The gifts are then delivered to children worldwide who are suffering because of natural disaster, disease, war, terrorism, famine and poverty.

Operation Christmas Child is not limited to just a few weeks a year, it is a yearround project, requiring months of organization and preparation to reach millions of kids around the world, the press release stated.

Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has distributed shoe-box gifts to more than 61 million children in some 130 countries.

According to the press release, staff and volunteers use whatever means necessary — sea containers, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes, helicopters, boats, camels, even dog sleds — to reach children in need.

To get involved, the group suggests various ways to aid the program, including:

• Help enlist families, churches, Scout troops, community groups and businesses to take part in creating shoebox gifts for needy children in more than 90 countries.

• Fill shoe boxes with school supplies, toys, basic necessities, candy and a letter of encouragement.

Step-by-step shoe-box packing instructions are available at www.samaritanspurse. org.

Operation Christmas Child began in the United States in 1993 with 28,000 shoe-box gifts. Since that time, the kidshelping kids project has collected more than 61 million shoe-box gifts and handdelivered them to needy children in some 130 countries, including:

Children stricken by poverty in warravaged Sudan (2007);

Children in war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries (2006);

Young survivors of the horrific tsunami in Southeast Asia (2005);

Schoolchildren attacked by terrorists in Beslan, Russia (2004);

Ugandan children devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic (2002);

War orphans in Kosovo (1999), Bosnia and Croatia (1995-1996), and Rwanda (1994); and

Children in Honduras and Nicaragua left homeless by Hurricane Mitch (1998).

Every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has packed an Operation Christmas Child shoe-box gift.

Residents are encouraged to sign up to join thousands of Operation Christmas Child volunteers this fall at one of hundreds of collection sites and processing centers in the United States to prepare millions of shoe-box gifts for delivery to underprivileged kids on six continents.

For more information on how to participate in Operation Christmas Child, call (410) 442-3701 or visit www.samaritanspurse. org. National Collection Week is Nov. 17-24, but shoe-box gifts are collected all year.