282 Christmas Shoeboxes leave HW to go and find a new, happy owner
 

  
     

 Once again this year, Hordle Walhampton School contributed to the Christmas Shoebox appeal. The staff, the children and their parents all chipped in, and the result was an enormous 269 lovingly filled and gift wrapped shoeboxes – with 325 children attending the school in total, this represents an amazingly high response rate. The Prep school donated their 170 boxes to Rotary International with destination Montenegro and Tanzania, whilst the Pre-prep supplied Samaritan’s Purse with 112 boxes.

In addition, the school’s knit wits, who normally meet under the weekly supervision of parent Di Wood, could not think of a better occasion to use these needles; soon a huge pile of warm, homemade woollen blankets was added to the boxes, freshly issued by the school's rather unusual knitting activity.

“The shoeboxes are an ingenuous way to raise the children's interest in charity as well as helping less privileged families. We all enjoyed putting the boxes together and we hope that whoever opens them in Tanzania or Montenegro will feel a little happier knowing that somebody in England is thinking about them.” says Elaine Arrowsmith, Year Four teacher and coordinator of the operation in the Prep school.

October 2007

  

It all started in a shoebox...

"My sister Kellie and I sent our first shoebox in 1996! I was two years old. Rotary International sent it to Albania.

We were very excited when we received a thank you letter early in 1997. The letter was from four sisters - the Poci family.

Every year since then we have sent each other letters, presents and Christmas cards. In 1996 they "could not sleep because of the gun shots" and were very scared so they stayed at home the whole time. Their mother worked as an accountant, and their father as a laboratory technician but all their work "was destroyed by the rebels". Over the years, things have improved and they now lead a normal life.

We believe that we helped them at a bad time in their lives, and we gained some good friends in return. We hope that some day, they will accept our invitation to visit us."