How to fill a Team Hope Shoe Box

Every year our family endeavor to fill several shoe boxes for Team Hope. These shoe boxes go to children around the world who won’t be receiving other Christmas gifts this year. I have first-hand experience of seeing children in both the Dominican Republic and India receive a Christmas shoe box. In the Dominican Republic they were given to street children and the child I met in India had a parent who had leprosy.  And, because of this experience, I feel strongly about supporting this project every year. I also think it helps to bring a little bit of perspective to my children, who will receive a lot this year.

I have found that it is much more cost effective to fill several boxes than just fill one as items like facecloths and soaps come in multipacks!

Team Hope has made things even easier for people for the past couple of years, as you can now buy flat pack shoeboxes. I stock them here. They cost €2 each which is great value considering the time you would spend sourcing and wrapping a regular shoebox. Of course, regular wrapped shoeboxes are also still accepted and appreciated. It’s just a matter of what is easier for your family.

Once you have your box, you need to decide whether it is for a boy or girl and what age to do it for, so you can buy or find appropriate items to put in it.

So, here’s what you need to put into them:

If you are looking for any of these, I stock

• novelty pens,
• colouring pencils,
• crayons,
• markers,
• gel pens,
• Unicorn Pencils and Dinosaur Pencils,
• flowery colouring boxes,
• animal colouring boxes,
• colouring velvet note books that come with markers.
• Boxes of Masks to colour in. These come with colours in the boxes and I stock Dinosaur ones and Princess ones.
• Scissors or safety scissors for younger children

Again, I can help you with a lot of these. Don’t forget that you don’t need to put in one of everything. Just one or two items from each list are perfect.  Here are some quick links for some of these items:

• Stickers
• Toy Vehicles
• Ball
• Skipping Rope and French Skipping Rope
• Yoyo
• Maracas, Tambourines, Castanets or Triangles
• WInd-Up Torches
• Kites
• Soft Toys

If you want more specific wow ideas per age and gender, check out this blog ‘Something WOW for Team Hope Shoeboxes‘

You also need to include €4 towards the shipping of your box to the child. There’s a list on the Team Hope Website of items you are not to put into your boxes and also a list of drop off points for your box.

I hope you enjoy filling your box. I’m sure it will bring so much joy to a little person this Christmas.

xx Suzie