(OSV News) -- More than a thousand Catholic groups including schools and various parish ministries across the country are expected to start their yearly push to collect toys and school supplies for impoverished children around the world.
It's part of an 11-year old program, which some participants said has deepened their faith, that's on track to total close to 900,000 gift boxes sent by this Christmas.
Box of Joy is a program of the Boca Raton, Florida-based Cross Catholic Outreach, a relief and development ministry that connects donors -- whether monetary or material -- from American parishes and dioceses with Catholic ministries for the poor in the developing world. Donors to the gift-giving ministry submit their boxes packed with children's gifts, which are all inspected by thousands of volunteers (including from Catholic and public schools).
They also supplement each box with "the story of Jesus and a rosary," according to Cross Catholic President Michele Sagarino.
The volunteers work at a Miami warehouse during the last week of October into early November, as they prepare the boxes to load into 40-foot containers that will be shipped to eight countries including Haiti, Peru and Grenada.
"They're talking and they're singing," she told OSV News. "But watching them; (high school) football players start to cry when they see the video of the children that are going to receive this, how can that not increase your faith, that God's love just never ends? You're participating in his love and the hope that he provides, and he just gives it back exponentially."
Susana Lopez-Chavarriaga first got involved with the Box of Joy program when she was 9 years old. Her father, Alex Lopez-Bueno, a grand knight of Maryland's Knights of Columbus state council, made it a local Knights' project in 2018. He told his daughter he wanted to propose it to her school. He said she called it "a great idea" and was immediately compelled to pitch the toy drive to her principal at St. Jude Regional Catholic School in Rockville, Maryland, who approved it before he even met with Lopez-Bueno.
That first year Susana checked on the program in the different classrooms at her school and found four empty boxes in the recycling bin of one class. She told the teacher they were not simply four leftover containers, "those are four gifts that kids are not going to receive" and so the teacher took them out and said she would fill them herself, explained Lopez-Bueno.
Now 15, Susana has continued the project at her Catholic high school. She told OSV News that "in (her) Catholic life," she has developed a strong sense of gratitude after collecting hundreds of gift boxes for needy children in the South and Central American as well as African countries.
She said, "It makes you really put yourself in other people's shoes. Like you really see, 'Wow there's a lot of poverty in this world.' And it's just my way to give back to others because God has blessed my life in so many ways possible. I mean, I have a beautiful family. I have a great education. I have great friends and then just being able to give back to people who maybe don't have the same education that I do, the same family, just giving back to others is how I thank God in my own way."
"It seems so simple, like putting gifts into a box and then shipping it off to Honduras, Guatemala or just any other place," Susana added, "even though we're so far away, it all connects us to God and our faith."
"It would be my dream" to travel to these countries and personally hand children their gift boxes, she said.
Sagarino said Cross Catholic Outreach created the gift box program in 2014 after doing an informal survey of the children served through their other ministries. They learned many, if not all, of those asked had never received a Christmas gift before. Last year, she said, Box of Joy distributed more than 135,000 gifts, more than 40 times the 3,000 they gave in the first year.
She said a gift box averages about $25 worth of items that include toys and other small goods. Shipping them to the Miami warehouse has an additional $9 cost, which she said the ministry can sometimes cover.
"The most unusual item for American children could be the most popular in these countries, such as a pair of socks," said Sagarino. "Or a pencil, because we've witnessed in these schools around the world, some classrooms, there's one pencil and they're sharing it."
For some who have traveled to give the gifts to the children in person, the experience can solidify their faith.
Brandi Milloy is a Box of Joy project leader at American Martyrs Parish in Manhattan Beach, California. She has personally distributed the boxes in the Dominican Republic.
"When they open their box and they see a brand new toy for them, the way that they look at a Matchbox car and all of its shiny elements and wheels, or the way they smell a new box of crayons or look at a hair accessory that's never been worn by someone. I mean, it is just such a beautiful experience to see them just be so grateful," she said.
Milloy said she started contributing to Box of Joy four years ago. And shortly afterward, she organized a Box of Joy party for her 40th birthday. Instead of receiving gifts from friends, she asked them to prepare gift boxes for the impoverished children. Milloy said her girlfriends stayed from mid-day through the early evening packing 75 boxes, inserting personally written messages, some telling the children Jesus loves them or that they had children the same age as the child they were packing a gift for and that their own son or daughter liked the same kind of gift.
"They're not just opening a present," she said. "It's so much more than that. It really just breaks open my friends' hearts … and makes them really want to put their heart and soul into putting a beautiful box together."
For herself, Milloy said the gift giving program has helped her put her faith into action.
"It's just deepened my faith even more, that no one is going to tell me to be a better person. It's not about my friends seeing what I do, or (with) my children, you know, me modeling behavior I want for them. At the end of the day, it's really (about) that promise and that allegiance, I guess, that I have, to Christ and my faith. And knowing that there's this beautiful quote, 'When I get to heaven at the end of my life, I would hope I could say, 'I used everything you gave me,'" said Milloy.
