Local back-to-school shoppers can help children in need through Operation Christmas Child

As Highland County schools prepare to open their doors for another year of learning, most parents and children will begin shopping for back-to-school bargains using a school-issued supply list as their guide.

Operation Christmas Child volunteers from the South Central Ohio area encourage parents and children to think beyond their own backpacks and buy extra school supplies for children they have never met.

By purchasing extra notebook paper, pens, pencils, crayons and erasers for Operation Christmas Child – a massive year-round project of international Christian relief and evangelism organization Samaritan’s Purse – participants can fill shoe boxes with these back-to-school supplies, small toys, necessity items and letters of encouragement for delivery to children overseas.

This shoe box packing effort, requiring months of organization and preparation, and will reach some 8.5 million kids who are suffering because of natural disaster, disease, war, terrorism, famine and poverty.

For many of these children, the shoe box will be the first gift they have ever received. Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has hand-delivered shoe box gifts to more than 86 million hurting children in some 130 countries.

For more information on how to pack a shoe box, or about Operation Christmas Child, call 800-353-5949 or go to www.samaritanpurse.org.

To drop off school supplies, get information on having your own shoebox packing event, or volunteering, contact Ed and Helen Hiestand, South Central Ohio Area coordinators, at 937-393-2790.