'The warehouses are like Father Christmas's grotto!'
Jacquie Norton-Shaw lives near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and has helped at various nearby warehouses for the last four years. Jacquie first discovered OCC through a leaflet in her local library. The work brought back memories: as a teenager she'd been shocked by similar poverty in Mexico . So Jacquie began doing shoe boxes, and as a Brown Owl, soon had her Brownies doing them as well.
Why Margaret spends her holidays in a warehouse
Margaret Parry lived a life in south Liverpool that was entirely shoe box free until one day in 1992 her son came home from school and dumped a leaflet on the kitchen table. “Mum, I need everything on this list. Now.”
Don't retire and just fade away!
Peter Allinson of Stockport, near Manchester, first got involved in the warehouses about three years ago, after he and his wife had retired from their fish and chip shop in Stockport . “I intended to go only for a few days, but then I just got drawn in. There were many women helpers, and they really needed some men to do the heavier jobs, like unpacking the vans and shifting the pallets around. So I did that.”
Do it for them and you do it for God even just sharpening pencils!
Joan Frobisher lives in Maghull, near Liverpool . She helps in the warehouse near the docks. Since she retired as a youth leader for the Liverpool Youth Music Centre, she has turned her great love for young people into her work for OCC. Joan first heard of OCC about nine years ago through her church, Aintree Village Family Church . “So some of us went down to help in the warehouse, and were hooked!
Squeezing in that 136th shoe box
Heather Robinson was first introduced to shoe boxes when she stayed in the ‘wrong bedroom'. “My best friend usually puts me up in her twin-bedded guest room, but this time it was her tiny box room. I didn't mind, but I was curious as to why?
Desperate housewife? Not down at the warehouse!
Jan Williams is a housewife in her 40s from Woodford Green in Essex , and she can fit the annual shoe box run into her daily schedule.
Seven minutes to cover a shoe box
Carrie Coles attends a chapel in Llantwit Fardre, South Wales , where she heard that the nearest warehouse, at Talbot Green, needed help. “Soon I was hooked.” Carrie and her husband enjoy taking coach trip holidays around the country.