Community rallies behind birthday wish to brighten kids’ Christmas

By Miriam Ostermann, Associate Editor

Soon-to-be 70 years old, Carolyn Larden had her birthday wish come true early this year and managed to cross a big item off her bucket list on account of a multitude of contributions from the community.
Instead of material items and birthday cards, the Strathmore resident asked her friends and family to help her stuff 70 shoeboxes with items sanctioned for the Samaritan’s Purse Canadian Operation Christmas Child.
After a month of accumulating hundreds of items to fill 35 boxes for boys and girls respectively, aged five to nine, Larden spent four straight days on her living room floor sorting and dividing up donations per shoebox.
Although she had contributed two to five boxes per year to the project over a 20-year span, Larden had never tackled a project of this magnitude.
“My friends all know I’m turning the ripe age of 70 … so rather than have people give me gifts or cards I asked for my bucket list, which is to send 70; I wanted to do something for somebody else and people stepped up to the plate like you would not believe,” said Larden.
“I would come home and there’d be a bag of donated items. Pencil crayons and little baby dolls for the girls hanging on the back step, and somebody just dropped them off. I went ‘wow, is this ever nice.’ And then if I was shopping out somewhere and somebody heard what I was doing, they’d say here is $20, go shopping.”
Many friends were motivated to help her reach her goal, but donations also trickled in from members of the community unbeknown to Larden.
Some people gave her money to purchase items, others sent her cheques, and a few stopped by her house to drop off donations – included 84 pairs of kid socks.
The boxes quickly filled with hair accessories, beads, rubber balls, a Ziploc bag with a homemade facecloth and a bar of soap, colouring books, pencil crayons and notepads for the girls, and marbles, toy trucks, and socks for the boys.
On top of that, each box received several balloons and a brand new ball cap – with an extra cardboard box full of ball caps being used as fillers by the organization.
Larden first started donating shoeboxes to the project when her grandchildren took part in the initiative at Westmount Elementary School years ago. After they graduated from the school, she continued with the project understanding wholeheartedly the importance of the cause.
“I believe that children are our future,” she said. “In the past I’ve helped with tutoring at school and in any way possible I want to help, even children far away they need it far more than our children.”
Samaritan’s Purse is a Christian relief organization that provides aid to victims of war, poverty, famine, persecution, disaster, and disease. Canadian Operation Christmas Child distributes shoeboxes filled with gifts to children in developing countries and over the years has already impacted 135 million children.
Last year over 660,000 shoeboxes packed by Canadians made their way to children in Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa nations and the Ukraine.
“In many of these countries, these children are so poor they have never received a gift in their entire lives, and so for them to receive a box full of stuff that may not be that useful to Canadians but is hugely useful to them from people they’ve never met from a country they may have never heard of, is just tremendous,” said Frank King, news media relations manager for Samaritan’s Purse Canada.
“We have a lot of senior citizens who love doing this. In many cases they’re grandparents, like myself, and they think about kids like their grandkids but who don’t have anything like what their grandkids have. It touches their heart and they say I want to change that. I want to play my little part in packing my shoeboxes to change that somehow for kids in the developing world.”
Larden estimated that a total of 25 people, including small local businesses, provided items and monetary donations to help her fill her 70 shoeboxes, which she dropped off at Westmount Elementary last week ready to be picked up. National collection week for Operation Christmas Child comes to a close on Nov. 19.
However, shoebox donations in Southern Alberta can still be made at the Calgary headquarters – 20 Hopewell Way NE – until noon on Dec. 8. Donations can also be made year-round online at www.packabox.ca.