WATCH: Thousands of Christmas shoeboxes to depart Limerick for poorer countries

MORE than 6,000 Christmas shoeboxes filled with gifts and treats for children in poorer countries will depart Limerick next week. 

The Team Hope Shoebox collection is back up and running, having been postponed due to the pandemic last year.

Volunteers are spending their days at the Old Cleeves Factory packing the shoeboxes for boys and girls, which will be sent out to 12 countries in Africa and several others in Eastern Europe.

“We think about 6,000 will be sent out this year and the truck will be coming on November 25, so that will be a big night loading everything up onto it,” Co-Ordinator Michael O’ Connell stated.

Shoeboxes, most of which have been filled by schoolchildren across Limerick, must be sent to the Factory by this coming Friday, November 19. Michael added that anyone interested in volunteering at the site is “more than welcome.”

Shoebox Appeal 2021 - thank you to all who filled boxes and donated online pic.twitter.com/eCy6yOnnWS

— Villiers School (@VilliersSchool) November 15, 2021

Limerick resident Sigi Murrihy has been participating in the shoebox appeal for a number of years, and this year has donated 110 of her very own homemade packages of joy.

She recalled her own experience with poverty, growing up in a post-war Germany where the many toys and privileges afforded to children in today’s world, were non-existent.

“I had to leave my house together with my mam. We were shipped to a small little place up in the mountains. There I was very lonely, had no toys, and somebody gave me a little brown paper bag and out from it came a doll. For me it was like heaven,” she told the Limerick Leader.

Years later, after moving to Limerick, where she is now 54 years married to a Farranshore man, Sigi was in a charity shop when she spotted a similar toy doll, realizing that it was now her own time to give something back.

She started off her first Christmas donating two shoeboxes, then four, then 64. Two years ago, she donated 230 shoeboxes to Team Hope, earning the label of “Limerick’s Mrs Claus.”

This year, Sigi (pictured above) has contributed 110 of her own homemade boxes of hope, as well as €1,020.

She said the process is simple, explaining that you put a piece of clothing at the bottom of the box, then add in a toothbrush and toothpaste as well as some toys and top it off with a few sweets.

“I hope that these shoeboxes will bring the same joy to poor children that I had, when I got my little doll during the war,” the Caherdavin woman concluded.

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