Operation Christmas Child Kicks off at Shawnee State University

Sep. 23, 2011

Operation Christmas Child drive will kick off at 7 p.m. at on Thursday, Sept. 29 in the Flohr Lecture Hall at Shawnee State University.

Guest speaker for the evening is John Holden, who has served with Operation Christmas Child since 2004. Courtney Bell, from Marshall University, also will share her experiences in Uganda distributing the shoe boxes.

Holden joined the project as the international logistics coordinator and served for five years as regional director for South and East Africa.

In 2009, he helped local volunteers in his region organize 4,410 distributions, delivering shoe box gifts to more than 882,000 children in 15 countries in Africa.

Under Holden's leadership, OCC in South and East Africa distributed more than 3.5 million shoebox gifts to needy children and enrolled 970,000 children in the OCC Discipleship program.

In 2011, Holden was promoted to international field ministry and discipleship manager. His focus will be on growing the international volunteer training program and "The Greatest Journey" discipleship program.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse that strives to send Christmas gifts and spread Christianity through the distribution of shoe boxes filled with tangible goods to needy children around the world. During the month of October, the SSU community is invited to contribute items for the boxes, pack a shoe box or help wrap shoe boxes at a packing party, date and times to be announced.

For more information, call Nikki Karabinis, coordinator at SSU's Center for Community Service, at (740) 351-3572 or e-mail nkarabinis@shawnee.edu.

The event is co-sponsored by 9th Hour and the M3C student groups at Shawnee State.