On Friday 25th November, Wyre Forest MP Mark Garnier visited the local base for Operation Christmas Child, a charity that sends gift-filled shoes boxes to disadvantaged children around the world.
A warehouse in Oldington Lane, Kidderminster is the local collection point for this charity, which has been running since 1990. All shoeboxes from North Worcestershire and South West Birmingham arrive here and will be shipped off to the Crimea this Tuesday (29th November). This year there have been 10,500 parcels packed by up to 35 volunteers.
After visiting the warehouse Mark said “it was a pleasure to go and meet some of the volunteers who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make this project a success. Ten and a half thousand shoe boxes collected, checked and sealed is no mean feat. Seeing them all piled up ready for transporting represented thousands of hours of hard work and also represents the large number of people in our community who are willing to help those less fortunate than ourselves.”
Dave Pearson, one of the coordinators of OCC, thanked local businesses for their support, “we are very grateful to R&D Aggregates for letting us use one of their warehouses for the collection point as well as Hire It for use of gas heaters and B&Q for lending their trolleys for moving the parcels around the warehouse.“
Last year over 500,000 people from across the UK and Ireland got involved in OCC. 1.12 million shoeboxes were sent to disadvantaged children across Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.