The Samaritan’s Purse project Operation Christmas Child is collecting shoebox gifts filled with toys, school supplies and personal care items to deliver to children in need around the world.

“Often these children have never received a gift, so it’s very special and fun. It’s a great project to do with your kids. It’s very simple. You can find any medium shoebox and you fill it with fun items like toys, barbies, trucks and then you can put coloring books and crayons and things in there,” said Melissa Hofmann, area coordinator for Operation Christmas Child in Central New York.

The organization is through the Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world.

“I just packed with my children when they were small, now I’m an empty nester and I wanted to do something purposeful and something I’m passionate about, so I became a year round volunteer in 2021,” Hofmann said.

Operation Christmas Child has been around since 1993. It’s the world’s largest Christmas project of its kind, collecting and delivering more than 220 million shoebox gifts to children in over 170 countries and territories.

“And if you can’t go shopping, we also have a build-a-box online program. You pick the fun items to put on the computer and somebody will pack that for you and you can write a note and they’ll put it in there for you,” Hofmann said.

But there’s still time to pack a box and have it collected during national collection week which ends Monday, Nov. 25.

“So you bring it to any dropoff and you can find a dropoff near you by going to samaritans purse.org/OCC and so there’s a lot of drop offs, this is just one of 10 in my area, but there’s drop offs all over the country,” Hofmann said.

Operation Christmas Child hopes to collect enough shoebox gifts to reach another 12 million children.