Thanks

Below are some selections from positive feedback to this website.

Thank you for your website which provides valuable information which schools, teachers, parents and children should understand fully before becoming involved with this sinister outfit.

I am a school governor in the Midlands and I am pleased to confirm that the school has today terminated its connection with OCC following the information I was able to bring to teachers’ attention; we will instead be supporting Link Romania which does not proselytise and is recommended as an alternative by the British Humanist Association. I am hoping that the matter will also be discussed at a meeting of local headteachers, so that all school leaders can understand why an increasing number of schools are refusing to support this group.

I have recently, tentatively, started a local campaign to make people aware of the full story about OCC. I wish I had found your site before I started! You've obviously worked tirelessly to collect information and investigate this area thoroughly and I just wanted to say thank you for that and to add my support to what you are trying to do.

If I get anywhere with the local press and with our local school and Council, I will let you know. Like you, I feel the pressure of unpopularity is about to descend on me, but so long as people understand we are just trying to ensure transparency - how can they complain?

On the recommendation of a friend I have also approached our local Council's diversity officer, who seems to be taking this seriously and is liaising with the Head of Education to do a proper review. I am hopeful that, at the least, schools may have to give parents more information about the scheme. I'll keep you up to date with how this goes.

I know that several parents locally have thought again about their involvement in the scheme, and a good friend in London is querying it with her school too.

My sister was an area co-ordinator for OCC for many years (she retired last year) but is still active within her local Christian community. She and her husband travelled back in 2003 with the OCC shoe-boxes to Romania and when they returned showed a video to all and sundry of the distribution.

I have only recently decided that my views are atheist but, even then, back in 2003, I remember watching the video and feeling more than slightly queasy. I particularly remember a scene where boxes were handed out to a peasant family in a poverty-stricken tenement building. The group leader travelling with my sister then explained (via an interpreter) that the boxes were 'sent by Jesus because it was his birthday' and then led the bemused family into prayer.

I suppose it's naïve to think that a project called 'Operation Christmas Child' won't have some connection to Christianity. After all, it's not the Christians fault (or perhaps it is?) that the average Brit tends now to view it as a secular festival. But you are very right to draw attention to the evangelistic element which is rife in America and is now infecting the body politic here in the UK.

In the meanwhile, I have made my reservations about OCC and Samaritan's Purse very clear to my sister.

I've sent you this e-mail because it sounds as if you receive rather more brickbats than bouquets; keep up the good work!

I have spent many hours recently researching Samaritan's Purse and the organisation of OCC. It has shocked me how little people seem to know about the organisation and its mission.

It was only yesterday, however, I found your website and therefore wanted to respond to your findings and comments. I watched a short film on BBC "Look East" just before Christmas in which their reporter followed some shoeboxes from England to an Eastern european country. The report showed the faces of happy children and painted an innocent picture of human generosity bringing joy to a child at Christmas. I sent an email to the BBC with extracts from Samitan's Purse mission statement and suggested that they investigate the bigger picture, but received no response.

I have also spoken about OCC to friends whose children have been involved in sending boxes via their school - on the one hand feeling that I should give them the facts the leaflets overlook, on the other hand feeling that I'm raining on their parade of human kindness.

I understand that The Guardian newspaper ran an article about OCC back in 2003 but everything seems to have gone quiet now. I also understand that donors are asked to put a cheque in the box to cover transport and sundry costs - Franklin Graham must be laughing all the way to the bank!

I don't really know where I'm going with this email, but I suppose I just want to give you my support in your efforts and say that you can certainly consider me a kindred spirit in educating unsuspecting Brits in the clever schemes of religious fanatics.

I’m working in the UK – London to be precise (which is why I was so startled to find out that my work was condoning what was, in effect, an evangelical movement). As per your descriptions, the pamphlet (or one sheet of paper) we received made no mention of any religious evangelical uses of the box other than to say that we were not to put anything of a religious or racial nature in the box.

Having spent the first 9 years of my life in a country that gets the more extreme missionary movements (Malaysia) I’ve been a firm supporter of church based charity being very open with exactly how much of the money they are given is used to convert rather than provide and continue food, lodgings, support and poverty-reduction activities.

I’m – deeply disgusted with what I’ve read so far about OCC, and your site has only made me more disgusted and even more concerned. It’s not that evangelists are necessarily bad (religious freedom dictates that they should be free to attempt to convert as much as we should be free to refuse to convert). However, by hiding what they’re doing – knowing that this way they’ll get more donations from the secular and atheist populations is not only dishonest but seems almost criminal.

I just hope that whoever suggested this at my organisation hadn’t done his or her research and will be as surprised as I was. The worst bit would be to find out that they were aware of everything OCC stands for and decided not to tell the rest of us. I’m just glad that they just suggested participating in OCC last week. At least most of us wouldn’t have started shopping yet.

Thank you for your confirmation and the booklet, I’ll make sure to bring it in to work to show the organisers (and everybody else if the organisers were aware and didn’t feel like enlightening the rest of us volunteers).

http://www.molevalley.gov.uk/index.cfm?Articleid=1564

http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/ebc-3735

http://www.vernon-coaker-mp.co.uk/69453112-c749-aa94-8db1-4c6b86ed997f

I've just spent a happy hour e-mailing folk who list themselves as supportes of OCC. These three merit extra attention (in my view) as they represent public bodies (2) and an MP (1).

If you're at a loose end then the Mayor of Bath ('mayor's_parlour@bathnes.gov.uk') may as well receive the benfit of your advice.

I've just sent a piece of my mind to each of them plus half a dozen others.

I just wanted to say well done on the website regarding OCC - I work in a school who run this "charity" every year and it frustrates me no end to see such an exploitation of people's desire to help those less well off. As I work in a school I have to be careful about how I approach this, especially considering my headteacher is of a, shall we say, "evangelistic" persuasion - Halloween is banned without question in our school, as are things like Harry Potter table names, not to mention elements of sex education due to his conservative nature.

I want to make an anonymous protest relating to OCC in my council (I'm in a London Borough) - do you have any advice on how to go about it? Have you tried contacting newspapers at all?

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Thank you very much for the detailed response - you've given me some moral support there and some clear direction in which to tackle the issue. My first port of call will be the local SACRE, and like you did, I will send anonymous letters to the local press to hopefully reach a wider audience!

I contacted you in June about my attempt to get my kids' school to stop their support of OCC. After several prompts from me, I finally had a decision from the head: they have withdrawn but rather grudgingly I thought. I have read some of your very calm and polite replies on your website to some of the religious nutters who contact you, sometimes insultingly. Don't know how you do it, though I'm sure that approach pays dividends and may occasionally persuade the more rational ones. Anyway I have replied to the head and hope I wasn't too rude though my partner thought I was perhaps rather unsympathetic...perhaps the head had had a tough time from the local SP rep. Is this likely? Do you know what SP's reaction is when a school wants to stop their involvement?

There has also been a short exchange of letters in the local paper between me and several other correspondents, including the local SP reps. The paper's editor isn't keen to prolong the debate as I don't think he's had many other letters on the subject. Other people I know have said they agree with my position but don't seem to want to bother writing to the paper.

Attached is the head teacher's letter and my reply to him. Also my letter to the paper, the replies to that and my reply to them (which will hopefully appear this coming Saturday but will I think be edited).

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Interesting to hear of you and your family's personal experiences re OCC. So far I've got off more lightly than you, though my letter to the local paper last year was severely edited, leaving out Graham's quotes and anything shocking like the AIDS stuff (that aspect of right wing Christianity really makes me angry) so that, as you said, what was left didn't make much of a point. Makes you wonder if the editor's a closet Christian? I'd have thought that a provincial paper would relish an issue with a bit of controversy attached as most reports are deadly dull.

This year I complained in advance (!) and asked that they didn't censor my letter and to my amazement they didn't. I have though been told that my second letter won't be printed in full (the local debate, the editor says, has moved on to wind farms - always in the news here) and unless there's a sudden flood of letters on the OCC topic I suspect that may be the end of the public debate for this year. I know that there are people out there who agree with my views but they don't seem to want to write to the paper. I will try to get the Herald to do a story about my kids' school leaving OCC but the head may not be keen on the idea.

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You didn't say in your previous message whether you know what SP/OCC get up to after a school has withdrawn. I guess there will be pressure on the head at the time then more pestering the following year - maybe that explains why the head was rather short in his letter to me (I'd feel pretty tetchy if I'd had my ear bent by some missionary!)....or maybe he's a committed Christian? Am I just getting paranoid now?! Again, like you, I had previously complained to the school so maybe was already a marked woman. In my case my kids came home with copies of the New Testament which they'd been given by some religious group who had been invited to do an assembly. I was so enraged I tore the pages out and threw them in the compost heap then wrote to the head. Anyway your being accused of being a humanist is in my opinion a compliment.

Thanks very much for all of your support and advice and I will let you know if there are developments here.

After taking some information to the staff member responsible for OCC in the school, he told me that they had received assurances from the UK branch of Samaritan's Purse that they operated very differently to the American one i.e. leaflets are only 'made available', not handed out etc. I pointed out the evangelical intentions of the charity and he agreed with me, and said that in future the school would be most likely not participate in the scheme to be on the safe side, and partake in a better initiative next year.

This victory (of sorts) was very satisfying, and I was thanked for my time and effort. Now all I need to do is check they don't turn back on their word next year!

Thanks for all your help and assistance - I couldn't have managed it without your support.

I came across your website about Operation Christmas Child. I worked for a company that did (and still does) a huge push to collect gift shoeboxes from the community and from employees for OCC. In fact, our company served as an OCC collection site.

Because of the position I held in the company, my boss made me go through the training for people working at collection sights. I was appalled by what I heard. A man who had taken part in the shoebox delivery spoke and said that he did not give the children their shoeboxes unless they brought a friend to hear the story of Jesus. Another said that any child who took a shoebox HAD to take a Bible as well. There was tremendous pressure placed on children who received the shoeboxes (and their families) to convert to Christianity.

After hearing that, I was even more appalled when the trainer encouraged us to "downplay" the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian aspect of OCC. (Although we were only supposed to solicit donations from Christians.) She knew very well that not as many people would donate if they were aware that their "gifts" were actually used to bribe children into accepting Bibles and converting to Christianity.

Next, we were all supposed to sign a volunteer agreement for OCC. The agreement stated explicitly that we were Christians working for Christ. As I am not a Christian, I did not sign, even though my boss wasn't very happy with me. I told her that if I signed the form, I would be lying; and if she forced me to sign the form, she would be violating my right to religious freedom. Even at the buckle of the Bible belt, that's a no-no for employers.

By the time I left the training, I was so disgusted with the whole program that I flatly refused to take any part in OCC for the rest of the time I worked for that company. Some of the other employees tried to make me feel guilty about not even giving a shoebox, but I replied that my time and money went to programs that did not use bribery and coercion to "help" children.

I thought I might be the only person who had those concerns, so I was so glad to come across your website.

Please feel free to use my story if you like--just don't use my name.

Thanks again for going public with your concerns about this program!