Packing a shoebox for kids in need is a holiday tradition for many in the Okanagan.
This week, a Kelowna church is collecting those gifts as part of Operation Christmas Child.
The Kelowna Gospel Fellowship Church expects to see more shoebox donations in the central Okanagan this year, with as many as 6,000 boxes coming in by the end of this week alone.
Eventually, boxes collected in the Okanagan will be distributed to children in other parts of the world alongside hundreds of thousands of other boxes from across Canada.
They’ll be delivered through Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian group.
“Operation Christmas Child is an effort to bring joy and gifts to children in areas where they are impoverished or in war zones or in disaster zones or places where they just don’t have what we have here in the Western World,” said Operation Christmas Child area coordinator Paul Nicholson.
The church will accept shoebox donations daily until Sunday.