Each year students at Trinity Christian School participate in two schoolwide community outreach projects – a global outreach in the fall and a local outreach in the spring.
For the past three years their fall project has been making shoebox gifts to be distributed worldwide with the Operation Christmas Child project.
Over the past few weeks, the school has been collecting items for the boxes and students participated in a “Dollar Wars” competition to help cover the cost of shipping the boxes.
“We’ve been collecting donations for about three weeks starting towards the end of October and our classes each have a responsibility for types of items to bring in,” said Principal Amanda Darby. “For example, our kindergarten class was responsible for bringing in craft items and each grade had a different type of item they were to bring in.”
Other classes brought in things like small toys, personal care items, hats and socks to help fill the shoeboxes.
Additionally, Darby said, “students could bring in dollars to buy free time in a particular class or period and we were able to raise over $2,000 for our project as well.”
Older students at the K-12 school were partnered with younger ones to act as student mentors or “buddies,” helping them select items for the box they are packing.
The school had a goal of packing 100 Christmas shoeboxes this year and Darby said they will hit that goal.
“We are expecting to pack over 100 boxes,” she said, “and the materials that we have left following our packing will be used for our spring service project that we focus locally and reach out to foster agencies in West Virginia to spread a little bit of extra love for our kiddos in foster programming in West Virginia.”
According to the principal, students at the school really respond to the shoebox project and understand its importance.
“Our students always seem to get really excited for packing shoeboxes,” she said. “They really understand how much joy getting a present on Christmas brings to them and they understand the kids that are receiving these wouldn’t have gift otherwise, so I think they really understand the amount of joy that it brings to kids across the world.”
Before the boxes were sent to their next destination, the students gathered on Friday afternoon to pray over the boxes.
For the past week, local churches and other organizations have been collecting shoeboxes that will be combined with the boxes from Trinity on Monday at The Christian & Missionary Alliance Church (CMA) located at 308 Elmhurst St. in Morgantown before being sent to an Operation Christmas Child national distribution center. From there, the shoebox gifts are sent to children in impoverished and war-torn nations across the world.
Operation Christmas Child has been collecting and delivering shoebox gifts filled with school supplies, hygiene items and fun toys to children worldwide since 1993.
2023 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Christmas Child and delivery of the 200 millionth shoebox gift. This year they hope to collect enough shoeboxes to reach another 11 million children.
Darby said Trinity will likely continue to support Operation Christmas Child because “there is a trust and a partnership there that these boxes are going not only to kids in need to spread some joy, but the organization itself spreads the love of Jesus to these kiddos as well. For us, as a Christian school, that is really important.”
Anyone can pack a shoebox, regardless of religious affiliation and there is still time to transform an empty shoebox into a gift. Boxes from our area will be shipped out from CMA on Monday, Nov. 20 and can be dropped off at the church until then. For more information on how and what to pack to participate, visit samaritanspurse.org.
