Christmas Shoebox Appeal 2024 Christmas Resources for Churches

We deliver Christmas shoeboxes to families and elderly people in the war-torn and poorest parts of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania.

Although we are a Christian charity, Christmas shoebox are donated to households according to their needs, rather than according to people’s religion or beliefs. These Christmas shoeboxes contain love, perhaps a Christmas card, note or photo, but they do not contain any other literature.

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Resources for family services, youth and children’s groups

 

The Christmas shoebox resources for churches below are freely available. However, if your congregation or youth group would like to take part in our Christmas Shoebox Appeal, please contact us and we will send you updates, including some of the people who receive our shoeboxes in.

What makes this Christmas Shoebox Appeal different?

  1. Delivering Christmas shoeboxes to homes helps our project workers identify emergencies, and address them. For example:
    • Maria, aged 74, was found sleeping on the dirt floor of her freezing home. Seeing her need, Link to Hope also delivered a bed, blankets and pillows to Maria.
    • A Christmas shoebox was delivered to a family grieving for their baby, who had died from cold because they had no money to heat the one room they all lived in. Link to Hope supporters raised enough funds to rehouse the family in a purpose-built container home.
  2. This Christmas Shoebox Appeal collects boxes for entire families and the elderly, so nobody’s left out.
  3. We are small, yet established enough to have personal relationships with the individuals in Eastern Europe who work hard delivering your boxes. For transparency, we also conduct spot-checks to confirm that the right people are receiving your boxes.

As you can imagine, coordinating our Christmas Shoebox Appeal is an enormous undertaking each year, so we started in May. We’re keen to hear from church groups that are interested in donating boxes or acting as a collection centre, as early as possible. We start shipping Christmas shoeboxes in November.

If you can help us, please register or contact us directly and we will be in touch with you.

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Youth group presentation about what the Christmas Shoebox Appeal does

This Christmas shoebox presentation is ideal for family services and is packed with facts, figures and our story. It contains photographs showing the way people live and an interactive exercise to help children understand the cramped, damp, cold and often unsafe conditions in which people who receive the shoeboxes live.

Shoebox presentation download for teachers
Presentation notes for teachers

Christmas shoebox resources for churches: stories and interactive lesson

These Christmas shoebox resources, will help your congregation or youth group to imagine the lives of the people who receive the shoeboxes, and how they will react to and use the gifts on our gift list. This helps everyone to understand the importance of what they are packing.

Using this presentation will help highlight the differences between our homes and the households to which shoeboxes are delivered by our project workers.

I am thankful presentation
Presentation notes

Christmas shoebox stories and interactive lessons for teachers

This Christmas shoebox lesson, which comes with a real-life story, helps children to imagine the lives of the people who receive the shoeboxes, and allows them to see how they react to the shoeboxes and use the gifts on our gift list. This helps children understand the importance of what they are packing, and see the recipients’ reactions to their gifts.

Gift list lesson

We have also added a movie to help older children and adults find out more about how to pack a Christmas shoebox.

Christmas shoebox posters and leaflets for churches

We can supply you with as many posters and leaflets as you need to help children and parents/carers understand more about the cause you are supporting.

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How churches and youth groups can join in our Christmas Shoebox Appeal

We fully appreciate that many households may be unable to spend £20 on filling a Christmas shoebox. For this reason, we recommend you invite members of your congregation to bring in a gift from our list of items to put in a shoebox. (However, this will need to be coordinated to avoid ending up with too many of one type of item.)

The educational Christmas shoebox resources above show how each item in a shoebox demonstrates love, and how they can improve the lives of the recipients.

Of course, if anyone person, or a group, is willing to fill an entire box themselves, we welcome this too. We also have homemade gift ideas that some members of your congregation might want to donate if they enjoy knitting or crocheting.

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