Christmas is coming and we can feel excited about getting presents. But we meet two girls who have discovered how much fun it is to give things, too – even to people we don’t know.
Getting presents can be fun. It can help us feel loved and gifts can be useful. But if we just “get” all the time, the joy doesn’t last.
Giving presents is important, too. We all need not just to feel loved but to give love too – even to people we don’t know.
There are a number of organisations running Love in a Box operations. In Britain, for example, Mustard Seed sends packages to Moldova and Children in Distress help kids in Romania. Link to Hope’s scheme helps adults as well as children. They made this moving video: https://youtu.be/ii_sr0hu_T0
In France, the American church in Paris is the focus of a network of schools and other associations distributing love-boxes and love-backpacks to children across the country, while in Belgium, the Shoe-box Appeal for adults as well as children collected nearly 50,000 packages last year.
We like the idea of the Backwards Advent Calendar. Instead of getting a small treat on every day of Advent, children put a little something in a box so that by Christmas they have a little stock of goodies to offer.
And, of course, depending on where you live, there are many other ways for kids to get involved in giving and caring, not just for the holidays but all year round.
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