Shoe Boxes

The photograph above was staged by our Bulletin Editor, Rtn David Hyde, who reports that in loading the boxes onto the pallets and the lorry,  “The hardest part by far was to get the shoeboxes in the right order to spell Merry Christmas.”  However, the loading was speedy and the event produced a lot of laughs.

The shoe boxes arrive as flat packs and are then shipped out to schools, churches and other community groups in October to be later collected along with £2 which pays for the box and shipping. Categories are Babies, Children, Teen and Household. This is a great team operation and epitomises our motto of “Service above Self”. Our involvement in shoe boxes was started in1993 by John Earp and operated out of the Fire Station at Heswall. We now have the good fortune to operate in the Belvedere Centre, Belvedere Centre, Wallasey. We can store around 4000 boxes at the centre and Julie, the centre manager looks after us very well.

The boxes are delivered in time for Christmas to various destinations in Eastern Europe.

Some time ago Rtn Anthony Bakewell (now a member of our Satellite Club of Penny Bridge) travelled with the lorries and was there for the delivery of the boxes to the children and said that just to see the joy on the children’s faces was worth all the effort we put in.

Our project leader, Rtn Manojit Lodh writes,

“May I send my heartfelt gratitude to the many dedicated  Rotarians who worked tirelessly for the last three months to  make our club shoebox project a real success.  You will be pleased to know that we are now one of the centres with the highest distribution of shoeboxes in Rotary GB&I.”

Our thanks also go to Manojit and Rtn Michael Emberton, who put in so much time and effort to make this project so successful.