2016 Campaign:
Great news – 11,040 beautifully wrapped shoeboxes, filled with gifts, have arrived in Romania, to be stored in People to People’s warehouse, ready for our distribution team. The team is due out on December 4th and will travel to Transylvania to distribute half of the boxes. This is where the new Vegetable Garden Plot campaign is underway. The other half will be given out by our partner charity, People 2 People in and around Oradea.

The Trustees send their very sincere thanks to everyone who has been concerned with this year’s campaign, whatever part you have played. You may have filled one box or more, inspired others, knitted, sewn, collected, checked, packed, loaded etc. We know we have an army of volunteers throughout the county (indeed the whole country), who have been beavering away all whole year round. This is a massive project, and the shoeboxes are full of generous and warm-hearted spirit from our communities.

Your boxes, filled with such care and compassion, will bring a little light to children living in abject poverty. And that is by no means the end of the story. As we take them round with Nicu Gal, our charity partner, we are all assessing and identifying other ways in which we can give practical help to these people who are so disadvantaged. Each team takes funds to respond to any urgent need, usually food parcels which we buy over there. And in the longer term, any surplus funding from the shoebox campaign and the many other fundraising efforts which take place throughout the year, goes directly to help with educational projects.

Feel free to start collecting boxes and items for next year!

2015 Campaign:
Another great campaign in 2015. Lots of our photos are now on the Facebook page, so please keep up to date on there.
The team had a hectic week in the Romanian winter, travelling long distances up to the border with Ukraine.

Once again the Trustees must offer their thanks to all volunteers, who filled a box, packed them, checked them, collected them. There are so many hours of volunteering which go unnoticed and we want to say THANK YOU!

2014 Campaign:
2014 was a bumper year for the shoebox campaign, with 10,133 brightly wrapped, beautifully filled shoeboxes sent to Romania, along with extra school supplies and extra hand knitting and crocheting.  This fantastic result, 12% up on last year, was due to the hard work, thoughtfulness, kindness, care and compassion of many, many people who have worked tirelessly – in all sorts of ways – some of them all the year round.  Their generosity brings a tremendous amount of happiness and joy to some the most deprived children in the world. It really does make a difference to families who live their lives in the most appalling conditions, without any of the comforts that we all enjoy, to know that someone cares about them.

All the Trustees send their sincere thanks to everyone who has been involved, both in Cumbria and beyond.  The support we get is hugely encouraging and, at times, quite overwhelming.  Every bit of this project is done willingly by a huge army of volunteers – it would not be possible otherwise.

The team went out to help distribute the boxes for a week from December 4th to 11th. This year, we gave out shoeboxes to the children we are getting to know in Tinca School, because we are excited and thrilled to see the wonderful work in this school, and we are watching the development of the lovely children  whose education is being supported by individuals and by funds donated to Boxes of Hope, Cumbria.

Then we travelled across Transylvania to hand out 1,000 shoeboxes on the garbage dump near Cluj, where families forage amongst the rats for metal and plastic which they can sell, and where they live in makeshift wooden and cardboard shelters which are hardly weatherproof in the harsh winters.

From Cluj we will either make a journey into Salaj county to take boxes into some State orphanages or, depending on the weather, over the mountains and towards Moldova.  Our partner charity, People to People, has received over 30,000 requests for shoeboxes, and Nicu is working hard to organise the priorities.

Read our separate report on the 2014 shoebox distribution trip