By Khalida Sarwari
Whether by plane, elephants or boat, a bevy of shoeboxes stuffed to the brim with gifts will be making their way to schoolchildren in Peru, and then to Indonesia, Nepal and finally the Philippines, just in time for the holiday season.
Behind the creation of each shoebox was a student at Sacred Heart School in Saratoga. The school’s nearly 250 students, from kindergarten through eighth grade, helped put together the boxes over the span of a month as part of a school-wide community outreach program on behalf of Operation Christmas Child, considered one of the world’s largest service projects.
The students began collecting donations of toys, school supplies, clothing, candy and toiletries in October by setting up bins along the school’s walkways and asking their families to give whatever they could. The idea was initially proposed last year by the mother of sixth-grader Paige Sadilek, but this is the first year it was implemented throughout the school.
The importance of helping those less fortunate than them was not lost on many of the students who participated in the project.
“I felt I really did a good thing because some people don’t get presents for Christmas, and this is the only present they’ll get,” said seventh-grade student Oriel Zagazeta, 12.
For others, it was also the idea of sharing their culture with others around the world that made the project special for them.
“The shoeboxes kind of give them an idea of how we live,” said fourth-grader Brianna Wiles, 9.
Chimed in eighth-grader Aileen Pulchny, 13, “It must be interesting for them to see what our culture is like.”
Packing and decorating the boxes took place inside Sacred Heart Church in November. The students were given autonomy to pack the boxes with whatever they liked, as long as it adhered to the instructions to keep the boxes gender-specific and appropriate to the assigned age group. Before sending each box off, the students tucked in personalized letters with a warm messages and their school’s address in case the recipient kids want to write back.
Throughout the sorting and packing process, the older kids could often be seen helping the younger ones, said Lupita Inzunza, who serves as the school’s admissions and advancement coordinator.
“I almost had tears in my eyes watching the event happening,” Inzunza said.
While the kids around the world will be benefiting from their generosity, the Sacred Heart students also gained much from the experience, said principal Thomas Pulchny.
“Our kids are getting a greater gift, really,” Pulchny said. “They’re the ones getting an opportunity to help others, and that was a self-serving goal for us: to train them to be the type of individuals to think of others first.”
The boxes were shipped for processing in Orange County in late November and will be distributed later this month. At some point early next year, the Sacred Heart students might even be shown a video of the kids receiving their gifts.
“It’s kind of fun to give them the journey of the shoebox,” said Gay Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for Operation Christmas Child. “The kids get a vision of what their box goes through. It really personalizes it for them.”
Link: Sacred Heart students fill shoeboxes with gifts for others
