By Steff WillisThursday 3 Nov 2022Station NewsReading Time: 2 minutes
Operation Christmas Child for 2022 has now wrapped (pardon the pun) with over 680 shoeboxes coming in from 96five listeners!
Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief organisation. The gift-filled shoeboxes are sent to local partners around the world that use them as a means of reaching out to children in their own communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ.
After receiving gift-filled shoeboxes, many children are invited to participate in The Greatest Journey discipleship program and millions of children each year are making decisions to follow Christ.
This year’s shoeboxes will be first be sent to Sydney for a final checking process and then be sent to Fiji, Cambodia, Philippines and a small amount to Ukraine.
96five is proud to partner with Samaritan’s Purse and to see the number of donations grow throughout the years from 341 in 2019 to over 680 in 2022. Whether it was donating, shopping up a storm or creating handmade gifts – we think you’re pretty awesome Brisbane!
Listeners got on board in all sorts of ways including Easy Truck Rentals who volunteered one of their trucks and their time to help us move the boxes to Samaritan’s Purse warehouse on the southside.
In 2021, Australia and New Zealand sent 210,182 shoeboxes to Cambodia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Madagascar, Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Globally, there were more than 10.5 million shoeboxes collected and sent to over 100 countries and territories through Samaritan’s Purse.
Learn more about the impact of your shoeboxes by reading nine-year-old Gladys’s story or by visiting Samaritan’s Purse’s website.