Rotary District 1110 Shoebox Scheme

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Breaking News!!

A container left last Thursday (13th November) for Tanzania and is reported to be on the high seas.

Another container left today Thursday 20th November for Montenegro with 7,800 boxes onboard.  The last container is to be loaded on Monday 24th November.

This scheme, which is a registered charity numbered 1064463, has been operating for a number of years and various Rotary clubs within the 1110 Rotary district have taken responsibility for its organisation.

The objective of the scheme is to fill shoeboxes, covered with Christmas wrapping paper, with gifts which are then shipped abroad and given to disadvantaged children who probably have not received a gift before.

The Ringwood club agreed in 2006 to take over the organisation of the project for a three year period, previously undertaken by the Southampton Magna club. 50,000 leaflets were printed which in addition to giving examples of suitable items to include and those not suitable, each one has a gummed tear-off portion which is attached to the box and indicates the sex and age range of the recipient child. People making up the boxes are also asked to contribute £1 per box to cover administration costs.

The majority of clubs in District 1110 participated in the scheme and by involving local schools and the general public, some 23,500 shoeboxes were received at the central collection point in November 2006 and 24,100 in November  2007.

The destination countries were the same as the previous year and we shipped approx two-thirds of the boxes to Montenegro and one-third to Tanzania. A residual balance of some 850 boxes in 2006 was despatched to Albania, which has benefited from the scheme in previous years.

Can you help Rotary District 1110 make this a record year thus enabling even more children to get a once-in-a-lifetime present?