Blog

At Team Hope, we believe in going beyond the box. A Christmas Shoebox is often the first connection. But long after the wrapping paper is gone, your support helps build long-term solutions that empower families like Abigail’s to break the cycle of poverty for good. 

Your Christmas Shoeboxes left from every corner of the country in November and December, loaded up by incredible volunteers! Have a look through the list to find out where your Christmas Shoebox has gone!

In 2024, with your help, we sent an incredible 171,675 Christmas Shoebox gifts to children across 13 countries in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Here you can read the stories from some of the children, see how much your Christmas Shoebox gift really meant to them and how it brought joy, happiness and hope to their lives.

By being part of this project Espérance is now able to offer her children a more healthy, safe and secure life and an education that will give them more opportunities to become parents who can do the same and more for their own children. 

Our most recent project in Kenya is working in an area inhabited by the Kamba community. 50% of the community is made up of children and most families eat what they grown in their own gardens. But the land there is dry and the rain is unreliable so food is not plentiful and children’s health suffers because of the lack of nutrition, clean drinking water and sanitation.

HIV is one of the biggest challenges faced by more than one million pregnant women globally each year and our story shows how one women in Eswatini overcame this challenge and is now helping other women to do the same. This is a story of hope.

In South East Kenya Team Hope has a new project that is helping to get safe running water to communities. On December 12nd 2023, in Nzewani Community, water stared flowing freely for the first time from 200 meters underground! The new borehole was celebrated as the best Christmas present ever for the 1,800 + children living in this community – a gift that will keep on giving for many years to come.

Psychotherapy is an often overlooked vital element of emergency response. In our partner’s centre in Moldova displaced Ukrainians have been offered counselling sessions for PTSD, art therapy sessions, children’s therapy and integration programmes.

I used to work as a lecturer at a Mechanical Engineering College before the conflict...It was difficult to comprehend why our peaceful Ukraine was torn apart, and the emotional toll was immense.