Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Appeal

This year we moved to a different warehouse in Telford, and had many more volunteers helping out, right from the start of the despatch operation in mid-November.  It was a good job, too, that so many new folks turned out, because, despite the UK's economic gloom, the number of shoeboxes passing through our hands actually increased to 8748.  Partly this was due to the fact that the Telford collection area had been reworked for 2011, losing most Shrewsbury postcodes and gaining many Stafford ones instead.
Alan spent most of his time either in the warehouse cartoning the boxes or out in the van collecting great piles of boxes from schools, churches, youth groups, etc.  As you can see, there were some very large numbers to be collected.  The truck came to collect the 8748 on December 1st, and then went on to the Shrewsbury depot to collect theirs also, before setting off to Dover for the onward journey to the children of Kosovo.  Al gets a bit part in the background of the video; he's a stacker in the back of the truck.