OCC at Isleham
Every year Pound Lane Free Church acts as a processing centre for Operation Christmas Child. In addition to shoeboxes filled with presents generously donated by the Primary School, churches and residents of Isleham, we process all boxes from CB6, CB7, CB8, IP27 and IP28 postcode areas.
Since we started we have seen many people come alongto the church to help with the processing, many coming back each year. The first stage is the collection of shoeboxes. We contact all who ordered 50 leaflets or more (schools, work places, churches and individuals) to offer to collect their boxes from them. We also collect from the Drop Off Points in Newmarket, Ely, Mildenhall, Soham, and Littleport. Other boxes are brought directly to plfc.
Each box on arrival has the donation removed and passed over to our finance team who process it before banking it with Samaritan's Purse. The box's contents are then checked against the list of prohibited items, and any boxes which are particularly low in content will have some additional gifts added from our supplies of 'fillers'. Please note that we ensure that each box is passed through as far as possible as the donor intended.
Each box is then sealed with custom's approved tape and transfered to our packing room. There, flat-pack cartons are made up and the boxes packed into them, according to sex and age range (great fun trying to work out how you most effectively fit boxes of all different shapes and sizes into each carton). The cartons are then sealed, labeled and transfered to Cambridge from where they are shipped by lorry to the destination country for distribution.
2010 report
So far this year we have processed just over 3,000 boxes. Hopefully we will at least equal our 2009 total of 3300. Over the last couple of years the number of volunteers coming to help process boxes has increased dramatically and so we now need fewer processing sessions. Accordingly the only remaining sessions will be on Monday 22nd Nov 2-4pm and 7-9pm.
The boxes will be shipped to Kyrgystan where they will be distributed to needy children.
Getting involved
If you would like to get invovled in the Operation Christmas Child project, please give us a ring on 01638 781343 or email: occ@plfc.org.uk