Dear Carole and the Parishioners Of St Boniface, Shirley

Thank you so much for supporting our shoebox scheme again this year.

It has been another successful year, with nearly 1000 boxes collected from Magna Rotary supporters. In total, 18,207 boxes were collected across the Wessex District.

I hope you found the new system of us supplying boxes beneficial. Many of the boxes were beautifully decorated with colouring, stickers or wrapping paper.

From feedback I have received it proved popular with many, as shoeboxes are becoming more difficult to obtain. It also enabled a little more standardisation of contents as all boxes were the same size. It certainly made our job of checking and packing a lot easier.

Lorries will be heading off to Albania, Montenegro, Moldova and Romania very shortly. Some of our boxes were identified as boxes to go to Ukraine. However, clubs in Lviv and Kyiv have said that they do not have the logistics capability to distribute them to orphanages etc in Ukraine. They are all extremely busy arranging shelters for tens of thousands of their population needing support, especially with more recent concerns of safety.

However, our colleagues in Moldova and Romania will make sure that those boxes will get to Ukrainian children who are refugees in their countries.

A huge thank you to everyone who donated shoeboxes, additional contents and knitwear and to those parishioners who sponsored boxes.

Chris Lait

Southampton Magna Rotary Club