Rotorua can bring festive cheer overseas with Operation Christmas Child

Adele Harris and Harry Harris with boxes they filled with items last year. Photo / File

The power to help make Christmas a special and memorable time for needy children in other countries can be in the hands of locals, by filling a shoe box with gifts.

Operation Christmas Child boxes today contain something to wear, something educational, something for hygiene, something to play with, something special and something to love.

Items such as school supplies, beanies, soft toys, toothbrushes and balls are often included.

Operation Christmas Child Rotorua co-ordinator Jan Bellingham says the boxes this will mostly be delivered to Fiji and other Pacific Islands this year.

Jan says despite the recent alert level announcements around Covid-19, they will still try to carry on with the box collections over the next couple months.

"Any help we can bring to anybody is invaluable. Let's do what we can where we can."

She says she is not expecting that they will collect as many boxes as they have in the past due to the strains of Covid-19, but that

In previous years, Rotorua schools, churches and individuals have filled about 600 to 700 boxes.

Jan says she has been in Fiji while children were opening their boxes before - "They don't know where to start, they're so excited."

Operation Christmas Child began in 1993 - the height of the war in Bosnia - when there were thousands of refugees, many suffering women and children.

Empty boxes can be collected from Talk Tech Now and people have until the end of October to drop off full shoeboxes.

They are collected in October and sent to Auckland for checking before going overseas.