Area high school students pack boxes for children in need
Submitted by Wendy Mills
Thirty-five senior high students from Wauconda, Mundelein and Libertyville high schools traveled to Minnesota recently to volunteer for Operation Christmas Child. Operation Christmas Child is an organization that ships donated shoe boxes around the world to less fortunate children.
The shoe boxes include toiletry items, school supplies, clothing items and toys. The age groups are 2-4, 5-9, and 10-14.
Wendy Mills, the Future Business Leaders of American chapter adviser, has been taking the group's seniors on this trip since 2010. This trip was different from most FBLA trips, which usually consist of business conferences or competitions. However, this time, it was all volunteering. The group of 38 people left on Friday, Dec. 2, at 7 a.m., arrived at the processing center around 3 p.m. and worked until 7 p.m. The processing center is in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Once the group arrived, they proceeded to unload their boxes from the coach bus. The students from Libertyville, Wauconda and Mundelein combined brought over 250 boxes to donate. The group soon went to training and began volunteering. The processing center is a huge warehouse with over 500 volunteers from various church groups or volunteer organizations, representing seven different states, to help pack, sort and inspect shoe boxes.
The group of students and chaperones Wendy Mills, Jill McKeon and Mary Jo Swift were on three different stations inspecting, taping and packing the shoe boxes into the larger cardboard boxes. The group volunteered on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday, their shift started at 10 a.m. and by the time their shift was over at 1 p.m. a pastor from the organization announced that they had helped pack over 11,000 Christmas boxes going to children in Madagascar.
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