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Important Update

Dear Connect Volunteer,

We praise God for you and your service as we close in on the best week of the year: National Collection Week!

As partners in ministry, we want to update you a blog post from 2017 that is resurfacing and gaining traction on social media. 

A blog post was published in 2017 about an incident in Zambia where the local pastors were informed they had to purchase Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts. Selling or charging for shoebox gifts is against Operation Christmas Child training and policy. When we were informed of the matter, we initiated an immediate investigation and coordinated an in-person meeting between Operation Christmas Child staff, our volunteer leadership team in Zambia, our regional volunteer leadership team in Mansa, and the local pastors.

As a result of this investigation, we discovered there was a misunderstanding during our training in this region. The local leadership team encouraged local partners to raise funds to support in-country transportation. Although we never required a donation or payment of local churches to receive shoeboxes, it led to a misunderstanding which resulted in local Ministry Partners paying a cost per shoebox to cover in-country expenses. This has since been addressed and corrected.

We recognized this was a significant issue, and we are deeply sorry for the confusion. We have since updated our training program. We now do not allow local Ministry Partners to do any fundraising related to the project. We have communicated this in our current training policy to our more than 75,000 in-country Ministry Partners across 1,100+ delivery sites.

We would like to be clear about what the $9 suggested donation does and does not include. The $9 suggested donation covers all project costs, including the transportation of shoebox gifts within the U.S. from our central drop-off locations to our eight Shoebox Processing Centers and the shipment of these shoeboxes to over 105 countries, and then to 1,100+ delivery sites within those countries. It does not include the final delivery of the shoebox from the 1,100 delivery sites to the final outreach location. This is handled by the trained Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child volunteer Ministry Partner, who delivers the shoebox gifts into the hands of a child. For example, when shoebox gifts arrive in Mexico, they are delivered to 67 sites around the country. At that point, the Ministry Partner will travel to the nearest site to retrieve the shoeboxes, following the strategic plan developed by the volunteer National Leadership Team and Operation Christmas Child. Volunteer Ministry Partners may incur occasional in-country expenses such as fuel for a van or truck, or festive decorations and snacks for the outreach event.

We are committed to upholding the integrity of every donation, as is demonstrated by our change to our training program, and we are diligent to cover as much costs as possible, avoiding any potential burden on local communities. We believe every shoebox gift is an opportunity to share the Gospel with a child in need worldwide.

For additional questions, please email Operation Christmas Child at occinfo@samaritan.org.


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