LYNN — There are children in other countries who have never received a Christmas gift. Volunteers in Lynn are working hard to change that.
Operation Christmas Child is a 25-year-old initiative that was started by Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to people around the world. The organization’s mission, according to its website, is to send homemade “shoebox gifts” filled with fun toys, school supplies, and hygiene items to children all over the world.
“For those of us to be blessed to live in United States, we mostly don’t imagine we know someone who never received a gift in their life,” said Hilda Spates, drop-off team leader at East Baptist Church in Lynn. “To receive a gift in the name of Jesus Christ has the ability to change someone’s life — someone who is not blessed in the way we are.”
Volunteers in Massachusetts and the rest of the Northeast region hope to collect more than 16,000 items this season as part of an effort to send 11 million gifts to children who have never received one. Volunteers across Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties, as well as throughout the state and around the world, are preparing for the initiative’s national collection week, Nov. 12-19.
“In the U.S., and some other countries we work with that pack them, they collect the gifts and then take them to countries overseas to bring to children in need, either from dealing with war, poverty or famine,” said Jennifer Frantz, a year-round volunteer and the area coordinator for the Northeast team. “We have local teams in other countries who also help distribute these shoebox gifts. It’s a means to reaching out to children in their community to remind them they are loved and not forgotten.”
Frantz said every state in the country has volunteers, and there are also volunteer teams in Australia, Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Operation Christmas Child has grown significantly since its debut in 1993, said Frantz. The local teams have drop-off locations in Billerica, Braintree, Chelmsford, Holliston, Hudson, Lexington, Lynn, Melrose, Saugus, Sharon, Somerville, and Waltham, with addresses and drop-off times that can be found on their website.
The East Baptist Church in Lynn is on their 22nd season of volunteering with the initiative and after becoming a drop-off location about 14 years ago, said Spates.
“Our first year, we packed 19 shoeboxes and delivered them to a church in North Hampton, N.H., at that time,” she said. “Last year was the largest intake of shoeboxes we had, with more than 1,600 boxes received at our location. That is just a small portion because, internationally, they received more than 15 million boxes and in the United states they got nearly 11.7 million.”
The Lynn church needs volunteers to help with the collections and to create and donate gift boxes. The gifts go to children all over the world, aged 2-14, and people of any age can take time out of their week to make them, said Frantz.
“What I like is the fact that a little 2-year-old can grab a shoebox-sized container, go shopping with their parents and pick out things they would want in a gift,” said Frantz. “They end up connecting with a 2-year-old in another country, who is in a much more desperate situation than we are here in the states.”
