Stories

Operation Christmas Child 2008 has been a great success with around 129 temporary warehouses opening across the UK since 1st November. These warehouses are run by volunteers for volunteers to visit to help us get the thousands of gift-filled shoe boxes ready for their journey to needy children overseas in time for Christmas.

Belgrade, Serbia - A Samaritans Purse team from the UK distributed shoeboxes filled with Christmas gifts to 3,000 children in Belgrade, Serbia this week, in some of the city’s most marginalized communities, including five Roma settlements and a refugee

The 2008 Operation Christmas Child campaign is in full swing, with thousands of volunteers across the country busy sorting through shoe boxes and helping them on their way to 13 countries around Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In Maidenhead, Berkshire, around 70 volunteers have been busy giving up their time to make OCC happen at the United Reformed Church in the centre of town – a satellite warehouse for the past three years.

From Alan Cutting in Serbia
International Partnerships and Teams Manager

From journalist Kate Nicholls in Serbia
Courtesy of Gloucester Citizen

In the evening we went to Sremska Kamenica "Children's Village" orphanage. It was pitch black and cold when we arrived but many of the children were stood outside waiting for us. Here are 130 children at the orphanage aged between 4 and 18. They can remain at the orphanage as long as they are at high school, and after that they will move into special apartments to help them bridge the gap between the orphanage and "real life."

From journalist Kate Nicholls in Serbia
Courtesy of Gloucester Citizen

Our first day is spent on a whirlwind tour of Belgrade.

To begin, we head to the Krnacha refugee camp in Pancevo, where 600 refugees live. As we approach the camp a chill goes down my spine and I get goosebumps. Rows and rows of monotonous small white buildings meet my eye, the ground is pot-holed and littered with rubbish, the grass verges overgrown and wild. The place is souless.

We had been invited to the Ecce-Homo run Social Centre for an evening meal. The centre is home for 12 children aged between 6 and 14 that have either lost their parents or have been abused and need a safe environment.

One really cheeky girl called Yelena stood out as a character. Not only did she speak very good English, but she had a maturity that was beyond her years. Using some finger puppets, she and her friends were kept amused throughout dinner and the cheeky, fun loving side of her personality shone through.

A shoe box from Selby travelled approximately 6,500 miles to Nastya, who lives in a children's home in the village of Asarevichi , Belarus . Nastya is nine years old, she lives, plays and studies in a drafty, 99 year old, converted church building along with 30 other children including Kardia, her seven year old sister. As we approached with outstretched arms, bearing the gift filled shoe box, the grey tones of her pale skin faded as her sparkling eyes and enormous smile shone through.

Winter in Romania is cold, hard and bitter and living conditions are poor and there are entire families living in the sort of poverty that we, in this country, would find difficult to imagine.

The shoe box centre
Martin Evans, from BBC Radio Gloucester, recently embarked on his first ever distribution trip to Romania. Whilst he was there he recorded his experiences in a diary, and here is snippet of his journey …

It was gloriously sunny as we approached a Roma Gypsy camp in downtown Belgrade. Our minibus drove up a dirt track reaching the underside of a bridge that had survived the NATO bombings some seven years earlier. This was home to the angels with dirty faces - two acres of ramshackle living quarters, rubbish dumps, lines of dingy laundry and unfriendly dogs.