The generosity of the people of Cochrane never fails.

Over 500 shoeboxes packed by Cochranites were received along with a shipment of 74,791 shoeboxes packed by Albertans through Operation Christmas Child.

Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and hand-delivered more than 186 million gift-filled shoeboxes to children in over 130 countries hurt by war, poverty, natural disaster, disease, and famine, according to Samaritan’s Purse Canada.

The program ran an online option this year called PackaBox.ca where you could choose to virtually pack the shoeboxes with things like toys, hygiene products, and school supplies for children around the world.

Across the country, 373,188 shoeboxes were packed.

2020's totals were lower than previous years, but News Media Relations Manager Frank King says they still received plenty of support. "We're really pleased with those numbers, especially given how difficult the entire world was for most of 2020 and how difficult it's starting off for 2021 as well!"

He says not surprisingly, online shoeboxes were more popular this year.

"What's really neat is folks have an option of packing shoeboxes for children in need online at packabox.ca and the number of those boxes massively increased over last year by tens of thousand more boxes."

Operation Christmas Child