Woodland Hills residents buy school supplies for children in need

As a new school year is underway, traditional back-to-school activities ramp up and families fill the aisles shopping for school materials, clothes and all the right digital gear to help students return to the classroom ready to learn. For many Woodland Hills-area families, however, the season for student discounts and school supply sales also presents a great opportunity to help children in need.

“Operation Christmas Child is a wonderful project to bless children around the world with presents and provide much needed basic supplies for their daily use and this is the time of year where stores offer the best discounts and savings on school supplies,” said Emmy Silverman, of Woodland Hills.

Silverman is one of more than 100,000 year-round volunteers nationwide who serves with Operation Christmas Child, which delivered nearly 9.9 million gift-filled shoeboxes last year in more than 100 countries to children struggling from war, disease, disaster, poverty, famine and persecution. The shoebox gifts included toys, school supplies and basic hygiene items.

“The project benefits the community because it helps them know that they are playing a part in enriching the lives of children around the world,” said Silverman.

This November, Operation Christmas Child volunteers like Silverman will support thousands of drop-off sites nationwide, where gift-filled shoeboxes will be collected and transported with a wide variety of resources, including bicycles, camels and canoes. Each shoebox will eventually be hand-delivered to a child in need. For many children, this represents the first gift they have ever received.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham. Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has delivered gift-filled shoeboxes to more than 113 million children in more than 150 countries. In 2014, Operation Christmas Child hopes to collect enough shoebox gifts to reach another 10 million children.

For more information about how to participate in Operation Christmas Child, call 714-432-7030 or visit samaritanspurse.org. National Collection Week for gift-filled shoeboxes is Nov. 17-24; however, shoebox gifts are collected all year at the Samaritan’s Purse headquarters in Boone, North Carolina. Participants can also build a shoebox through an online tool offering a personalized and convenient way to send a gift to a child in one of the hardest-to-reach countries.

Using special tracking technology, participants can follow their boxes online and discover the country to which their gifts will be delivered to children in need. To register a shoebox gift, use the online donation form at samaritanspurse.org.