MORE than 4,000 gift-filled boxes will delivered from south Cumbria to children who won’t receive anything else this Christmas.
The 2015 Cumbria Boxes of Hope campaign closed with 4,150 hand-wrapped shoeboxes gathered at the Barrow collection point.
They were filled by schools, organisations, businesses and individuals for disadvantaged children living in Romania and will be added to the rest of the collections throughout the county.
Since this year’s campaign began, more than 100 dedicated volunteers have been hand-checking each shoebox to ensure its contents are suitable before they were due to be loaded on to wagons today.
A group of volunteers will then make the journey to Romania in early December to begin distributing the shoeboxes to the children.
Rhona Teale, shoebox co-ordinator and manager of the Barrow warehouse, said: “It makes me want to cry. I cannot believe the generosity of people in and around Furness.
„They are just so generous and often it is people who have got very little that are giving us stuff, so I am lost for words really.
„People are so full of compassion for these children who have got nothing.”
Since 2012 the charity has been sending shoeboxes filled with toys, clothing and toiletries to some of the world’s most underprivileged children.
The Evening Mail office has also served as a drop-off point.
Mrs Teale, who has just been named as a trustee of the charity, along with assistant manager, Shirley Waters, added: “It takes around four days for the drivers to get over there, but then they have to drive all the way back so it takes about a week in total.
