For the past 10 years, my oldest daughter Robyn has been the area coordinator for OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD. Because of health issues, primarily a knee replacement, Robyn decided she could not continue overseeing this demanding position. We searched for several weeks for a suitable drop-off location and a replacement for Robyn but found no successor. We have a very talented and ambitious young lady from our church who oversees our shoebox collection. However, that doesn’t cover the collection, recording, packing, and transporting of more than a thousand boxes from our home in Brattleboro to the district drop-off center in Rutland, VT.
SOOO….. as an ardent supporter of OCC, and seeing no one else able to step in, I picked me. And for those who aren’t really up to speed on Operation Christmas Child, I thought I would share a little history so that when you hear me urging you to “packabox,” you’ll have a better idea of what is going on.
Operation Christmas Child actually began in the late 1990’s in North Wales, and it has roots in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Romania experienced a violent end of Communism in 1989, and in spring 1990 images of neglected children in Romanian orphanages spread around the world. David Cooke, a man from Wrexham in North Wales, and his wife teamed up with a local radio station to ask residents to collect items for these Romanian orphans. Someone in his family suggested that children wrap shoeboxes and fill them with things other children would enjoy, and his daughter Naomi dreamt up the name “Operation Christmas Child.”
Cooke, his friends John Roberts and Dal Hughes, and his brother Paul formed the initial team. In December 1990, a convoy of nine trucks left Wrexham, complete with a marching band and a crowd seeing it off, bound for Romania with over £600,000 of aid. The aid wasn’t only shoeboxes. The first convoy carried medical supplies, food, clothing and Christmas gifts.
The campaign was meant to be a one-time appeal, but it kept growing. Between 1990 and 1995, shoeboxes went to Belarus, Bosnia and Romania. The German Samaritan’s Purse partner organization says the campaign could not be stopped, and that Cooke formally handed it to Samaritan’s Purse in 1993 to make it more professional and extend it to more countries.
Samaritan’s Purse was founded in 1970, and Franklin Graham became president in 1979 after founder Bob Pierce died the year before. Graham tells the 1993 story this way. In July 1993, Cooke contacted him for help collecting gifts for children in Bosnia. Graham agreed, then pushed it out of his mind. That fall Cooke called again to ask when the gifts would be sent, and with last-minute help from several pastors, Graham delivered 28,000 shoebox gifts to Bosnia. Samaritan’s Purse’s 25th-anniversary account adds that the Canadian office combined gifts with the U.S. collection and sent them to children in Eastern Europe that Christmas.
Within twenty years, the program had become a year-round operation. By its 20th anniversary, it was delivering millions of shoeboxes each year to children in nearly 100 countries. The shoebox count grew steadily. One church’s account puts the total at about 113 million boxes by the late 2010s. It had reached 157 million shoeboxes in 160 countries by the program’s 25th anniversary in 2018.
Notable disaster and conflict responses include 60,000 shoebox gifts sent to children in the Middle East in 2014 and the typhoon response in the Philippines. According to a Christian Post piece, Operation Christmas Child shipped more than 60,000 shoeboxes to young survivors of Typhoon Haiyan.
A major shift came in 2009. Samaritan’s Purse launched The Greatest Journey, a discipleship program for shoebox recipients, and more than 5 million children graduated from it in the first five years. It is a 12-lesson Bible course taught through local churches. Samaritan’s Purse reports that over 52 million shoebox recipients have taken part since 2009. The program made explicit what had been implicit: the shoebox starts an evangelistic relationship with a local church.
U.S. collections kept climbing. In 2024, 10.5 million shoeboxes were collected across the U.S., and about 11.9 million worldwide. In 2025, people collected 12.2 million shoebox gifts globally, including 10.9 million in the U.S. Some went to children affected by Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that struck Jamaica. The cumulative total is now more than 244 million shoebox gifts delivered to children in more than 175 countries and territories since 1993.
This year’s National Collection Week runs November 16–23, 2026, and aims to collect enough boxes to reach 12.8 million children. The suggested online donation is $10 per shoebox, with a “Follow Your Box” tracking feature.
Of course, as with all such programs, OCC is not without its detractors. The usual accusations are that Samaritan’s Purse uses the shoeboxes as a subtle way to proselytize children. I answer those accusations this way. There is nothing subtle about it. Samaritan’s Purse is openly and unapologetically a Christian organization known around the world for its humanitarian efforts. But they are a Christian organization, and Christian organizations share the gospel. There is no deception or subterfuge – it is what it is.
However, for many children, it is the first gift they have ever received, and sharing the Christian message is the program’s explicit and honest purpose. One Christian Post commentator argued that a pamphlet declaring God’s love is not a legitimate ground for moral offense.
Donors in our area consistently contribute more than one thousand boxes each year. We have committed folks who “shop” all year long, watching for sales on toys, school supplies, and hygiene items to use at home and at packing parties. (We’re having one of those on November 11 at our church)
If you’ve never packed a box before, you can visit samaritanspurse.org/occ to find all the information you need. You can also build a box online at samaritanspurse.org/buildonline. Collection week is November 13 through 23. If you are in our area, you can drop them off during the week at Agape Christian Fellowship, located at 30 Canal Street. I’ll post the drop-off times on our church social media page. If you’re not in our area, the Samaritan’s Purse website has a drop-off location finder.
Join the shoebox bandwagon and bring joy to children around the world who will have no Christmas without you and me.
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