Liberty University club collects over 2,000 shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child

The holiday season can be a difficult time for children and families who cannot afford gifts, and that’s why Liberty University’s Operation Christmas Child student club dedicates its time every year to collecting gift-filled shoeboxes to send to children all around the globe. This year, they collected over 2,000 boxes.

Operation Christmas Child, an initiative of Samaritan’s Purse, is the world’s largest Christmas project of its kind, demonstrating God’s love in a tangible way to children in need.

The OCC club meets at least once a month during the school year to plan, but their busiest time is in the fall leading up to LU Blitz Week (the second week of November, when shoebox gifts are collected across campus). Participants gain skills in leadership and communication through helping with shoebox packing, promotion, and collection.

This year, the club’s goal was to collect 2,000 boxes, which they had surpassed by Friday, the final day for collections.

The club provided the empty boxes; students could pick them up from various locations on campus, pack them as an individual or group, and return them to the same location. There were also two Campus Community nights where boxes were given out at the end of the service.

“This year we changed the approach; we focused on giving people time and making the campus aware by giving out the boxes sooner,” said president of the OCC club Cassanda Straube, a senior studying elementary education. “Usually, we give them out in mid-November, but this year we gave them out at the start of October, and we really saw a difference.”

In total, 500 boxes were collected during Campus Community, 500 were donated by Residential Commons III and IV, another 500 were donated by a packing party hosted by the OCC club on Nov. 14. The rest came from students, community groups, and different clubs on campus.

“It’s cool to look back and see all the ways God has provided for this ministry,” Straube said. “There is a lot of planning I did for this semester because I wanted to pack more boxes than last year, but the way we got a lot done was God moving in ways we couldn’t even imagine.”

Over the past 20 years, people from all over the world have packed more than 100 million shoeboxes through OCC, and over the past three years, Liberty has packed more than 4,000 shoeboxes.

“I wish more people knew how much it can really impact the child,” Straube said. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about people who are now adults who received a box as a child, and even a little item like a toothbrush or pencil can impact a child so much and completely change their life, and they can feel God’s love so much through that.”