A WORCESTER businessman has stepped in to lend a city charity a warehouse for a month so they can pack up to 5,000 Christmas shoebox gifts and send them to deprived children around the world.
Philip Ralph, owner of the Guinness Park Farm Business Park at Bransford, Worcester, said he was delighted to help Operation Christmas Child (OCC) as he had a unit free during November.
Charity area organiser Sue Tindall, who was given the keys last Wednesday (November 1), said: “It’s a lovely, light, airy building and just what we have been looking for.”
It follows an article about the warehouse appeal in the Observer on September 13, which also led to another five volunteers offering to help the group.
An OCC manager, who was looking for a warehouse for their Wolverhampton branch, contacted estate agents Fisher German who mentioned that there might be a unit free at Bransford.
As he thought it was more suitable for the Worcester group he contacted Sue.
The 40 volunteers have moved into the unit to check, collect and store the boxes which lorries will then dispatch on December 8 to Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union countries and Africa.
Last year the Worcester branch of OCC, which is a member of Samaritan’s Purse International UK, sent 4,495 boxes abroad as part of the national charity’s 900,008 presents to more than 100 countries.
The group relies on dozens of businesses, churches, groups, schools and individuals across the county to donate filled boxes.
The charity can pick up the shoeboxes or they can be dropped off in Worcester at Shoezone, 2 Broad Street, WR1 3LH, The Entertainer toy shop, 16 The Shambles, WR1 2RA, Specsavers, 64 Broad Street, WR1 3LY.
Alternatively, they can be brought direct to the warehouse, which is off on the right of the A4103 just outside Bransford on the road to Leigh Sinton, every day between 10am and 2pm from Tuesday to Saturday.
To find out how to pack a shoebox gift and what items are allowed visit the charity’s website www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk or e-mail [email protected] for more.
