Presents from a stranger bring smiles to young

Jan 7 2009 by Paul Loraine, The Journal

A CHILD runs to the corner of a school classroom, clutching a shoebox close to his chest. Opening it, his eyes are alive with anticipation and he gives a kiss to each item in turn – a ball, a toothbrush, a small animal figure.

Finding a bat and ball from the box, he breaks into song, waving them in the air.

This was the reaction of one of the hundreds of thousands of children around the world who, in the past few weeks, received a shoebox packed by a British counterpart as part of Operation Christmas Child (OCC).

Earlier this month, I travelled with a Samaritan’s Purse distribution team to Romania, 18 years after the project first landed in the poverty-stricken nation, exposing horrific conditions in the country’s orphanages.

I had been told things had greatly improved, but on arriving in Bucharest we learned that a trip to an orphanage had been cancelled.

The manager didn’t want anyone from the West going inside, making me question quite how much progress has been made.

Instead, we were to visit schools, hospitals, churches and Roma villages over five days and I was interested to see how things may have changed, particularly since Romania joined the EU two years ago.

Our hosts for the first part of the visit were Estera Cernat Grigore, 36, and her husband Viorel, 29.

The couple – Estera is a qualified dentist and Viorel a former company manager – gave up a financially lucrative life to help needy children.

“We didn’t even know the villages existed – I didn’t know about the poverty,” Estera said. “Some of the parents had tears in their eyes when we gave out the boxes – the kids have nothing.

“To me, it’s a message that somebody cares.”

Based in Campalung, in the Arges region, it was striking that in the space of 10 miles we could move from relatively plush surroundings to the mud tracks and single-room homes of the villages.

One minute we were watching people travelling on horse and cart and getting their water from a well, and the next we were in a ubiquitous shopping mall drinking Coke and watching Sky television.

After three days in the Arges region, we took a flight north to Cluj, where the very first OCC distribution took place in December 1990.

We met with the Ecce Homo team, a charity helping poverty-stricken families, orphans and children living on the street.

Its president, Liviu Balas, said despite EU money coming into the country, the poorest families were not seeing any.

“There are many families who have no incomes because parents who went to work lost their jobs and can’t get another,” he said.

“The government made a law saying these families have to be supported by the government.

“But they make the processes so sophisticated and complicated that the families can never get to the support.

“Many of them can’t read and write.

“You find people collecting food from the garbage bins. You think they must be collecting food for the animals but then you see them take a bite.

“The children grow up blind inside with no feelings, no emotions.”

It’s thought that 700,000 children in Romania are left at home by their parents who go to work outside the country.

Liviu told me they deal with many families where children as young as 12 have taken their own lives because they have been left to look after younger brothers and sisters by parents looking for work.

Some families only have one pair of shoes to go around. One child goes to school while his brother or sister stays at home and then they swap the following day.

The charity makes efforts to place the children into ‘family homes’, taking 10-12 at a time to give them a sense of belonging.

But, by the charity’s own admission, there is a long way to go before the numbers of needy children dwindle significantly, so the shoeboxes are as relevant and gladly accepted as ever.

For many of the children, the shoebox is the only gift they will ever receive.

For me, one story communicated the profundity of the boxes’ impact like no other.

Liviu said one boy had not opened his box two years after it had been given to him, leaving it sitting in his house untouched.

When asked why, he said that as long as the box remained shut he would have something to look forward to.

Linda Thompson, a regional manager at Samaritan’s Purse, said the impact is wider than many might anticipate.

“The impact is really overwhelming,” she said.

“The joy with which these boxes are received really is something you have to be there to touch and feel but I’m sure that for people at home, there are so many pictures and stories that they will be in no doubt that the gift they have given has brought joy not only to the child but to families and communities.”

Rare gift

OPERATION Christmas Child is a project run by the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse.

It has seen boxes delivered to more than 60 million underprivileged children around the world since 1990.

Around 1.3 million shoeboxes a year are sent from the UK to children in hospitals, orphanages, Internally Displaced Persons camps, homeless shelters and impoverished neighbourhoods.

The charity works with smaller organisations in countries around the world which take charge in distributing the boxes.

However, teams of volunteers from the UK fly out to the receiving countries to play a part in the final stages of the process.

The aim of the project is to make sure every child in need between the age of two and 15 gets a box at least once, so efforts are made to distribute boxes in different places every year.

For many of the children the box is the only Christmas present they will ever receive.