Boxed In - Operation Christmas Child

Bronwyn Rideout - 1 November 2021

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when a post by a favourite local café stopped me mid-swipe. The words “Christmas” and “shoebox” in the same sentence caused a brief moment of dread to call upon me because, while I loved their date scones, I was not going to support a business that championed Operation Christmas Child (OCC).

Luckily the charity being promoted was Shoebox Aotearoa which, as far as I can tell, lacks the evangelism and white saviour antics of OCC. While my scone supplier remains unchanged, I was curious about the current state of OCC, a charity whose annual appeal punctuated the winter activities of the various schools and clubs I attended back in Canada.

For the uninitiated, Operation Christmas Child is the name given to the shoebox gift programme currently administered by the American evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organisation Samaritan’s Purse. In the lead up to each Christmas, churches, schools, community groups and individuals fill tens of thousands of shoeboxes with $20 worth of clothing, books, toys, hygiene products and stationery to be sent to 170 countries and territories. Donors can choose to pack a box for either a boy or girl, in one of three age groups: 2-4, 5-9, or 10-14. An additional $9 to $10 donation is strongly recommended, to cover the costs of collecting, processing and shipping the shoeboxes. For the more tech-savvy, a $30 donation can be made online, and you can outsource the work to an OCC volunteer.

OCC was founded in 1990 in Wales by carpenter Dave Cooke and his wife Jill. Nicolae Ceaușescu’s strict anti-abortion policy had the knock-on effect of overwhelming Romanian orphanages with unwanted children. The extent of the neglect and poor living conditions was not fully appreciated until after Ceaușescu’s execution on December 25th, 1989. Dave and Jill had watched a broadcast of such orphanages, and were inspired to find a way to bring a small amount of joy to their inhabitants. The shoebox reimagined as an easy-to-transport stocking, and with local support, nearly 3000 boxes made it to Romania that first year.

In 1993, Cooke reached out to Samaritan’s Purse for assistance. Samaritan’s Purse president Franklin Graham initially forgot his promise to help out, but was able (with the help of some Canadians and Calvary Church in Charlotte, NC - which has a membership of 4000 as of 2019) to send out 28,000 boxes to Bosnia. By 1995, Operation Christmas Child came under the complete management of Samaritan’s Purse, and over 178 million children overall have received an OCC shoebox.

So far, so good. Right? There’s nothing inherently wrong with bringing, shall I say, Christmas cheer to children, through the giving of gifts.

There is, however, a lot to scrutinise about Samaritan’s Purse, and the strings that it attaches to its projects firmly and clearly identify it as the source of much of the criticism that has been laid against OCC in recent years.

As stated, Samaritan’s Purse (SP) is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organisation that operates internationally as well as within the countries that traditionally send aid in the event of natural disasters and pandemics. SP was founded by Rev. Robert Pierce in 1970, three years after he was fired (or resigned, depending on your source) from the board at World Vision International, which he also founded in 1950. In 1973, Pierce met William Franklin Graham III (known as Franklin), who is himself the son of the prominent evangelist Billy Graham. Pierce and the younger Graham travelled together on many international missions until Pierce’s death in 1978, after which Franklin became president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Given such evangelical pedigree, it should be surprising to no one that Samaritan’s Purse is so explicit about its religious stance in its statement of faith, which includes the following zinger:

We believe God’s plan for human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of marriage, that God created man and woman as unique biological persons made to complete each other. God instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society. For this reason, we believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.

Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6; Mark 10:6-9; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9.

Franklin Graham himself is a notorious Donald Trump supporter whose twitter feed is a trash fire of homophobic and xenophobic tweets. This seeps into how SP is operated, with the funding of anti-islamic missions and the requirement of residents of earthquake ravaged communities in El Salvador to sit through prayer meetings before the meting out of aid.

As a project of SP, Operation Christmas Child is an extension of that evangelical mission whereby SP “… partners with the local church worldwide to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and make disciples of the nations”. Shoeboxes are distributed through churches, and upon receiving a shoebox, a copy of “The Greatest Gift” booklet (a “colourful presentation of the gospel”) is provided alongside. Recipients are then invited to enrol in a follow-up 12-lesson programme, called “The Greatest Journey” to learn about Jesus. The course culminates with a graduation ceremony in front of family and their community, where the graduands receive a certificate and a copy of the New Testament in their own language. SP hopes that through this exposure, children will eventually bring their family to Christ. By their own numbers, they sound successful approximately 50% of the time, with 26.5 million children supposedly enrolled in the Greatest Journey programme, and 12.5 million going on to choose Jesus, since 2009. However, with 8.8 million boxes distributed in 2018 alone, the true rate of conversion is likely much less.

All of this information is clearly presented and easily found on the Samaritan’s Purse website, especially on the joint Australia/New Zealand website. However, the internet is littered with articles where volunteers, parents and potential employees are surprised by the coercive methods by which religious materials were distributed, and the bigoted and hard-lined nature of SP.

Since 2013, OCC has been the subject of growing scrutiny in light of increased societal dialogues on colonisation, effective altruism and a desire for more secular charity options. A summation of these criticisms have been collated from a variety of sources, which are included at the end of the article are a worthy read on their own.

Boxes are not filled with appropriate items

Since you are unable to choose where your box is going, it is not uncommon for children to receive shoeboxes filled with items inappropriate for their climate, i.e. scarves and gloves being sent to desert or tropical areas. Despite the popular belief that volunteers take apart all boxes to ensure equitability, they instead add items to the shoebox rather than remove any. A further criticism levelled is the focus on toys. While a hit in some areas, some toys are poorly made, or their use is unknown to the child and the adults around them. The resulting plastic trash is left to litter and pollute communities too poorly resourced to handle garbage of that sort.

Disrupts local economy

The influx of any sort of overseas goods into a community potentially destabilises local markets. While stationery and hygiene goods are useful, they can be purchased more cheaply at the local market. Moreover, the $30 dollars that go into the filling and shipping of shoeboxes can go much further in many areas served by OCC. The blogger at “bush baby Colvin” claims that the following list describes exactly how far $30 can really go in rural Zambia, buying one of these:
60,000 litres of potable drinking water
100 kg of maize meal, which feeds a family for 4 months
School fees and uniforms for 6 elementary kids for a year
2 breeding goats
6 insecticide treated mosquito nets
15 gallons of soy beans
Wages for 3 weeks of farm work

Targets countries with large Muslim populations

Enough said. Franklin Graham has not been silent about his opinions on seeing Islam as an evil and wicked religion.

Corruption

In her blog, Emily Joy shared the curated tweets of a Malawian recipient of a shoe box. The former recipient stated that even the wealthiest of students received a shoe box at her church-affiliated school. They confirm that the boxes were often filled with unfamiliar items, but were also received at random times of the year. However, they also witnessed teachers and church elders haggling and collecting multiple boxes in order to sell off the contents.
In 2018, the blogger of “bush baby Colvin” reported that their fellowship was required by the National Leadership Team in Zambia to pay an equivalent of $4,000 USD for 5,000 shoe boxes they received. According to the blogger, it was OCC policy that the National Leadership Team was responsible for distribution and fundraising within the country, which contradicts how OCC advertises the so-called $9 donation in western countries. While OCC states that the boxes are not to be sold, the Zambian National Leadership team levied a transportation fee that the churches then pay on a per/box basis. Further costs are incurred as churches are required to send someone for OCC training per X boxes received. OCC contended that it was a local issue that was resolved, although commenters to this blog argue otherwise.

While readers of the NZ Skeptics newsletter are likely safe from misspending their hard-earned dimes with Operation Christmas Child, many will have family, friends, workplaces that do, or children who come home after a Boy Scouts or Cadets meeting with a box themselves. In these instances, it is worth considering what alternatives can be suggested locally or abroad that may fill that niche.

The link below for Humanist UK has a series of options, but it would be great to hear from Skeptics in NZ about what local charities and groups they support, and maybe put together an ethically secular list on our website.

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