Alternatives to Operation Christmas Child?

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Dd has just started reception, and has come home with a letter stating that the school supports this charity and could we put together a shoebox for it.

I am aware of the dodginess of this charity, and have no problem sending a letter citing reports of the problems with it, but i want to be positive and suggest some alternatives. Our local town/rotary club etc (Hertfordshire) does not appear to do anything like this. Can anyone tell me of any other accessible, preferably national schemes that i can suggest?

I had a quick search on older threads, and saw the Met and Women’s Aid mentioned but the Met ones have to be handed in to Met police stations only (difficult to get a schools worth of bulky items into London from here), and i can’t see any clear info on a WA scheme like this. Anyone have experience of another easily accessible christmas present cause that all us well meaning people can put our energies towards?

Can I ask, not being goady, what is the issue with operation Christmas child?

Some ideas here
humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanism-today/humanists-doing/good-causes-and-charities/samaritans-purse/

I wonder if you could do something for a local food bank? Fill up a stocking or shoebox with

Our local community are doing shoe boxes for the homeless in our nearest town. This is what I am doing this year.

I think it's easier to find similar schemes that take cash donations such as Mary's meals. This is also a Christian charity but without the issues of Christian child. I say this as a staunch atheist. DSs school was involved in raising money for this one and I did a bit of digging, and certainly at the time, I couldn't see any issues. The did things such as a dress down day and I think one year they donated the amount they would normally spend on lunch and school supplied them with a basic lunch of soup and bread.

Not goady at all, i should have said - the organisation that runs it is a highly evangelical American organisation called Samaritan’s Purse who are far more concerned with conversion of the heathen than with altruism. Their leader in particular, Franklin Graham is well known for making public Islamaphobic and homophobic statements. There is a lot of concern that the material distributed with these boxes, as a prerequisite of receiving them, is aimed at propagating these views.

And that’s without getting into the ethics of sending gifts aimed at a Christian fesitval to non-Christian countries in the first place.

The the humanist society page linked above includes a hyperlink to a downloadable letter template for parents to send to their schools.

Yes, i have no problems with a Christian charity (who else would you expect to take the lead on a Christian festival like Christmas) just not an evangelical proselytising one. It is entirely possible to do nice things for people with no ulterior motives and many thousands of kind people do every year

This article is a few years out of date, but is a god brief summary of the problems housefulofchaos.com/reasons-to-not-support-operation-christmas-child/

The trouble with the cash donation ones is that small children can’t get involved like they do with the shoeboxes, so they are not likely to appeal to a primary school, and as i said my local area doesn’t appear to be doing anything similar so can’t suggest local.

Oops - slow typing fingers and i missed your posts -
Thank you very much AvocadosBeforeMortgages for the link, and for the idea of food bank alternatives, that might very well be the best alternatives.

I think this quote from a comment in your link, might be worth paraphrasing should you write to the school. I don't know how multicultural your area is, but the last sentence particularly could be an effective point to make

because of how it markets itself, Operation Christmas Child comes across as a good secular way to “help” children in other parts of the world, and it has wormed its way into public schools and other organizations which are not religious organizations. So conceivably, you have Muslim, Hindu and families of other religions who are supporting an organization that is on public record as denouncing their faiths