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Operation Christmas Child

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bodil~enwiki (talk | contribs) at 14:25, 30 October 2006 (Removed pov sentence "Nevertheless, the goal of Operation Christmas Child is simple: bringing the joy of Christmas and the hope for tomorrow to children around the world. "). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Operation Christmas Child is a worldwide giving program run by an Evangelical Christian international relief organization known as Samaritan's Purse. The project generally begins in the month of October and finishes with a worldwide collection week near the end of November. All around the world, people pack shoeboxes with gifts for a specific age range and sex (such as "Boy, 10-14 years old" or "Girl, 2-4 years old"). These boxes are then collected by Samaritan's Purse and shipped to third-world countries. The boxes are sometimes handed out with various Christian evangelical materials.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of the Christian international relief organization Samaritan's Purse. The boxes are packed by families, churches, businesses, and schools in Australia (New Zealand,) Canada, Finland, Germany (Austria, Switzerland,) Ireland, the Netherlands (Belgium,) the United Kingdom and the United States. The most common items placed in the boxes are school supplies, small toys, and hygiene products. Tens of thousands of volunteers process the boxes in Operation Christmas Child collection points and warehouses during the holiday season. Samaritan's Purse then ships the boxes to developing countries where local churches and organizations distribute them to children (ages 14 and younger) who may have been affected by poverty, war, disease, and natural disaster. The project started in the UK in 1990 as an outreach to children in Romania and was adopted by Samaritan's Purse in 1993, when 28,000 boxes were delivered to children in war-torn Bosnia. Since then, Samaritan's Purse has collected and distributed more than 46 million boxes to boys and girls in over 130 countries.

In recent years, several critics have questioned the altruism of the project, noting that evangelical Christian literature has been distributed with the shoeboxes, and have alleged that the project's underlying aim is the proselytization of non-Christians.

Official websites

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