Charity Shoe Boxes

mrs_moneyspinner

I want to send a regular shoe box to our soldiers/armed forces - has anyone done this? what would they like in the box and where do you send it to? is there a website with info?
Our church does a similar thing for Romania and takes the boxes on a lorry and this got me thinking ... our forces must really appreciate these gestures too.

tpsjrm

Back to the original question, Claire's Accessories in Gloucester has got a sale on of £3 for a pack of 10 accessories. I got two packs for prizes for a fete I'm involved with, and the stuff inside is excellent. You can't see what you are getting, as the packs are opaque and it's pot luck, but I think they are well worth a £3 investment. Mine had mixtures of bracelets, ear rings, brooches, badges, ear muffs and even a beanie hat with a skull picture on - very goth! They had still got the original prices on each accessory and both of my two packs gave me over £30-worth of goodies.

moneysavingmumofone

i made up 6 shoeboxes last year but missed the cut off date the stuff still went to a good home though. (womens refuge)

sammy_kaye18

Hi All Im hopign ot join in on this too - i keep sayign im going to do it but never got round to it.

My little boy did his harvest festival hmaper last year with his school for the first time and got to go to the local nursing home in our village and deliver things to the old people there - his teacher said he loved it and was making all the old ladies smile.

I think introducing him to something like this whilst hes young will make him see how fortunate he is, and will hopefully instill some good values in him too.

HOGSHEAD - I was jsut reading your list for teenage boys (i think i might concerntrate on this group adn make them a sort of wash bag) but with regards to the torches and batteries beign an issue - why not look in the pound shop and see if they have a wind up torch ?? this would mean then that they didnt need batteries and is totally reusable provided it isnt broken.

Mrs Moneyspinner - I dont know of a scheme like this but if you do find one please let me know - i would love to support our troops. Maybe you could join a penpal site - write to a soldier and find out what they like then make your own gift box up and send it to them.

sammy_kaye18

Hi guys

Forgot to add that there is also a nice little charity right under our noses in the uk called Post Pals - www.postpals.co.uk.

It is for children with serious illnesses whos family sometimes dont have time to prepare christmas or get gifts etc because they are trying to cope with the childs illness/surgery etc.

Even sending a post card to them makes them smile.

Worth a look

snoony2

The gift section of the WH Smith website has some great bargains at the moment which would be good for shoe boxes. Some items are reduced by at least 75%.

Pencil cases and A5 note books are reduced to around 79p each. - I ordered a few and they are great - really good quality. The note books have RRP stickers on them for over £5.

They also have trainer bags in the gift section which are priced at 99p - I like to put these into the boxes as they take up hardly any room if laid flat in the bottom of the box and I think they're a really useful gift to add in- again the RRP of these bags was around £5.

From the 24th of March to the 30th of March you can get an extra 20% of some items if you put in the code PRIV20 at the checkout.....oh, delivery is free to if you select the option to have your items delivered to your local store.

Hope this might be useful for someone

rosekitten

I was in a large local pound shop and saw this
typicaly for me cant remember the name
of it but its nextdoor to home & Bargain
at Bel Vale shopping centre,Liverpool
perhaps someone on here may know
the name.

this is what I bought there are 20
different colours in this packet and
they were also selling a large sized
card filled with embriodery needles
I like to make up embriodery kits
for older girls to do.Because if your
snowed in at winter time,it can be a
welcome diversion and its a popular
past time abroad



lots do boxes for the cute younger
kids but they always struggle to get
enough boxes for the older ones,
especially the boys 13 +.





.

emay

Someone I work with went to India after the tsunami and took similar stuff and was told (which never occured to me) if your putting pencils/crayons in the box put in a sharpener too, if they don't have access to one the pencil is pretty much useless!

Lurleene

Hi,
just though I should get cracking on with this years shoeboxes, and thought I would start with 10 this year.

Anyway, yesterday I bought courtesy of Tesco's Value Range

10 shower gels
30 soaps
10 toothpastes
40 tootbrushes

for the grand sum of £7.30!!! :eek: By adding a couple of other things to take it over the £10 mark I used a Health and Beauty coupon which gave me 250 Clubcard points ( £10 in deals) therefore this lot was practically free to me:j leaving me more money to spend on other things to put in the boxes!

got-it-spend-it

Wow, I'm so pleased I found this thread!

Just looked at the Link Romania site that someone posted. I'd like to try and and collect boxes amongst friends and family so should I register with the site myself? I'm unsure of what success rate I will have with friends etc, but will certainly make around 6-10 boxes between me and hubby.

Look forward to hearing more ideas of what people are including.