Organization hoping donors capitalize on school-type sales

By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

An organization that provides school supplies to impoverished children is urging the local community to take advantage of back-to-school sales.

The Central Texas chapter of Operation Christmas Child reached a milestone last year when it delivered 24,000 shoeboxes full of gifts to underprivileged children in foreign countries. This year’s campaign for shoebox donations will tip off in September, but area coordinator Ray Garner said donors can keep their costs down by taking advantage of back-to-school sales now.

“Last year we reached a milestone marker… This year we’re shooting for 30,000 [shoeboxes],” Garner said. “Hopefully the [children] are going to get some learning-type supplies: pencils, paper, Crayolas, markers. Things like that so they can learn to read and write, and a toy or two to encourage them. Typically people will include some hard candy and send games, learning tools, anything of that nature that a child of a certain age group would enjoy.”

Central Texas has 22 relay sites for shoebox gift collection. First Baptist Church, where Garner attends, serves as the Pflugerville relay site.

The final collection of the boxes won’t happen until November, but Garner said putting a box together while back-to-school is on people’s minds will help ensure the children receiving the gifts will get supplies they badly need.

“The schools that I’ve visited overseas, they almost do everything by rogue learning because they don’t have the materials available or the money to buy pens and paper and the things to write stuff down. They have chalkboards so they can write and erase and the next student can write what they need to write, but to have a tool of their own to take home is very valuable. Journals are always nice because they have lots of pages and the students can journal their daily activities,” Garner said.

Twenty-year-old Oksana Nelson knows the difference an OCC shoebox can make first- hand. She received a box from Operation Christmas Child when she was an orphan in Russia. Now she lives in the U.S. and serves as a national spokesperson for OCC as one of its “full circle children.”

“I was just put into the orphanage a year before I received my shoebox at age 7 or 8. That was the first gift I ever really got. It was pretty special to have something, and it showed me that there were people out there who really loved me,” Nelson said. “I realized that there were still people who cared for others. That was kind of a foreign concept to me, but it was kind of cool.”

Nelson was adopted and moved to the Southern California area in 2001 at age 10. Four years ago she moved to Hico, Texas. She said the greatest gift she received from OCC was her faith, but simple items from her shoebox meant a lot to her as well.

“I don’t remember all the things in my box, but I remember I had a game of dominos, a pair of socks, candy and my favorite item was a tube of toothpaste, because we had to share [toothpaste] at the orphanage, and for the first time I got my own tube.”

Nelson said the orphans at her grade school in Russia had to wear a different uniform and felt alienated from their classmates, and lack of modern school supplies furthered their isolation.

“Other kids had really cool pens. I never had pens like that. I remember I always wanted those pens that had the three colors in one pen. Everybody had those and I never did. I just had a pencil,” Nelson said. “All the other kids had different kinds of things, like different notebooks I remember that I never had before and that was something that I always wanted.”

For more information on how to get involved with Operation Christmas Child visit samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC.

“It was one of those things where, I never had that kind of love before, and I know that sounds weird, it coming from a tangible object, but the shoebox showed me that there were people out there that still had compassion for others, and that really revived my spirit and showed me there’s hope in this life,” Nelson said.

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com