Boxes of joy, filled with love: Children fill shoeboxes to give to others in need around the world

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

Children got a chance to share their faith with peers around the world through a project with a local aim of uniting parishioners and Catholic school students.
Marybeth Hay, director of catechesis at St. Mary Parish and Our Lady of the Valley Regional School in Uxbridge, organized people from different places in packing shoeboxes of Christmas gifts for children in developing countries through Box of Joy, a ministry of Cross Catholic Outreach, based in Boca Raton, Florida.
Cross Catholic’s “mission is to mobilize the global Catholic Church to transform the poor and their communities materially and spiritually for the glory of Jesus Christ,” through “an international network of dioceses, parishes and Catholic missionaries,” says its website crosscatholic.org.
Mrs. Hay’s job includes connecting people from the parish and school, getting parishioners to consider Catholic school education, and welcoming school families without a parish to join St. Mary’s. She chose Box of Joy as a project for religious education and school children, and doubled the number of boxes the parish filled last year. She distributed 200 shoeboxes this year.
“It encourages them [to see that] it’s not just Catholic school kids that can do good works,” she said. It encourages them “to live out their life in Christ.” It helps them realize, “we can reach out from the walls of our school, the walls of the church, to each other and beyond each other,” and see that “all of God’s children can participate in supporting one another.”
Families bought items to pack in the boxes at home or brought in loose donations, Mrs. Hay said.
Parishioners and the school community saw the pile of finished boxes.
“It was interesting to watch this mountain of boxes” grow, as people brought them to the parish center over a six-week period. They were delivered to a drop-off site in Medfield Nov. 12, she said. “I called them boxes of joy filled with love.”
Mrs. Hay was impressed with donors’ sensitivity in choosing gifts for people of different races in different climates.
“Not all of the dollies were white with blonde hair,” and there were flip flops for children “who have never had a pair of shoes,” she said.
Rebecca Eland packed boxes with her children, two of them students at Our Lady of the Valley.
“We talked about how these are kids with a lot less, so they would be [happy] with the simple things,” she said.
Her daughter Nora, 9, said she likes Barbie dolls. For a girl her age they included two Barbies, a coloring book, a T-shirt and a string backpack.
Kate Lariviere said her children were excited about the box they packed. Her 4-year-old, Jenson, understood its importance because of helping pick vegetables for the hungry last summer, she said. Her 9-year-old, Logan, an OLV student, “drew a picture of herself and some of her favorite things.”
Asked about packing the box, Logan said, “It was very fun.” She thought, “This is going to make this little girl happy.”
Mrs. Hay said that donors including a note or photo in the box was a “heart-warming way to connect children from around the world,” and that “there’s no better way than the personal invitation … to grow in discipleship and love of Christ.” She said donors shared their faith in various ways: with notes saying that they attend Catholic school or are praying for recipients and by including a rosary and instructions for praying it.
Cross Catholic was appreciative of the 100 shoeboxes she ordered last year, she said.
“I thought 100 was a lot; I wasn’t even sure we would fill them,” she recalled. But all the boxes were taken in one weekend. Some parishioners who teach at the school took boxes to their classes. Other teachers wanted boxes but couldn’t get any, because they were all gone, she said.
So, Mrs. Hay said, this October she got 200 shoeboxes and opened the project to the whole school. The boxes were all taken within three weeks, she said, and some people who were disappointed that they didn’t get a box are looking forward to next year saying, “I’m going to take one at the beginning.”
Sandra Buron and her husband attend St. Mary’s and last year she packed shoeboxes with their grandchildren. This year Mrs. Buron, who is director of the middle school religious education program at St. Joseph Parish in Charlton, asked for 25 boxes for the St. Joseph’s Edge program.
Middle schoolers like service projects, but “we don’t have the ability to go far,” Mrs. Buron said. Packing shoeboxes “allowed them to do a project outside Worcester County. … The kids seemed to enjoy it.” She said she thought it reminded them there are people less fortunate than they are.
Mrs. Hay said families told her this project “creates a beautiful opportunity for children to look at Christmas as less about getting and more about giving, taking the focus off themselves.” Like Jesus, they could give without getting something in return.
She said she told “ecstatic” preschoolers from the school, when they delivered loose donations, that “giving can give you a better feeling than receiving.”