Lethbridge gives boost to Samaritan’s Purse
CITY RESIDENTS DONATE MORE THAN 2,000 SHOEBOXES
Over the holiday season, Lethbridge residents — and the rest of Canada — delivered. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians packed 373,188 shoeboxes with toys, hygiene items, school supplies and other items during the Samaritans Purse 2020 Operation Christmas Child shoebox campaign that recently ended.
Among those shoeboxes contributed, 2,365 came from Lethbridge with a total of 74,791 from Alberta.
The numbers, both Canadawide and for Lethbridge, were down from previous years due to the pandemic, but Frank King, news media relations manager for Samaritans Purse, said there's still reason to be proud of those numbers.
“There's definitely plenty of reason for Lethbridge folks to toot their horn on this because so many of them came out and said 'I don't care if there's a pandemic. I'm still going to make sure children get some hope and some help from Canada.'”
Last year, King said over 400,000 shoeboxes were sent across the globe to children in need, but given the number of churches not meeting in person this past year due to COVID, the dip in shoebox numbers was to be expected.
“We knew this would be the situation, so given all that, we are extremely grateful to have so many churches, Canadians and businesses that have stepped up and said 'We're going to stay a part of this no matter how challenging it is in terms of people meeting and safely packing up and dropping off boxes.' We're grateful for those who have remained with us in the Lethbridge area and also across Canada. I guess they realize with or without a pandemic there are all kinds of children in this world that have never received a gift in their lives and for them to get this box full of stuff from people they've never met or from a country they may not have even heard of, talk about giving them hope and a feeling they have not been forgotten and, as a Christian organization, a feeling God has not forgotten about them in whatever situation they're in. When I think about that, it makes it clear why we're in this for the long haul no matter what pandemic is going on.”
Canadians were asked to pack three things in the shoe boxes; school supplies, toys and hygeine supplies.
School supplies were the key one.
“Even in countries where education is free, quite often the parents have to provide the pencils and erasers and papers, all the general school supplies the kids would need to go to school,” said King. “For a lot of families in the developing world, that alone means their kids don't get an education. So, talk about the value of these shoe boxes. When some of these kids open these boxes up and suddenly they see pencils, paper and erasers, now they can go to school with their friends. That's an amazing thing. That's a vital reason to be packing shoe boxes for children in need.”
Samaritans Purse is busy year round with literacy programs, safe water and disaster relief.
In keeping with that yearround theme, Lethbridge residents can pack a shoebox 12 months of the year thanks to the www.PackaBox.ca option.
“We really heavily promoted packabox.ca this year more than we normally would because of the pandemic,” said King. “We're thrilled with how many Canadians have packed shoeboxes this year. It's tens of thousands of shoeboxes more than we've had in previous years.”
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