Cars, cakes and crayons needed for Shoeboxes

Cash, cars, cakes – and crayons, are all on Rochfortbridge woman Mary Quirke’s wishlist.

That’s because Mary and a small team of helpers are currently attempting to fill an incredible 700 Christmas shoeboxes for less privileged children around the world.

Filling the boxes is a mammoth task – but, explains Mary, it costs €4 to send each box.

“So for those 700 boxes, we need to raise €2,800,” she explains.

To help come up with the cash, Rochfortbridge’s ‘Team Hope’ is holding a cake sale this weekend.

The cake sale is over two days – November 3 and November 4 – outside the church in Rochfortbridge after Mass.

Not everyone can give over the time to prepare shoeboxes, but Mary is appealing to those who are free on Thursday evening to attend the table quiz or next week to support the cake sale, either with donations of confections or purchases of the creations on offer.

“The table quiz questions are being set by Declan Fletcher, and the entry fee for a table of four is €20,” says Mary.

A side feature of the evening that may interest parents is a sale of second-hand toys – items in top-class order donated to Mary for Team Hope but too large to fit into shoeboxes.

The cake sale has become an annual event, and Mary hopes that as in previous years, Rochfortbridge baking fans will pull out all the stops and come up with their usual array of cakes, buns, cupcakes and tarts.

Also on sale will be some of the too-large teddies donated for the shoebox appeal.

Cars and crayons

Sixteen years now assembling shoeboxes for children, Mary has been gathering items for this Christmas since last Christmas.

The process of wrapping the shoeboxes in Christmas paper was undertaken by a team member over the summer – and the 700 box target is Mary’s team’s most ambitious yet.

“Every week, I go in to the Paul Byron store in Tullamore: they save shoeboxes for me,” she says.

As well as the boxes that Mary and her team will fill, Mary has around 12 schools involved, and in those schools, children are putting together boxes.

“But because they identify with children their own age, they tend not to do boxes for younger children so we focus on boxes for children who are 2-4 years old,” says Mary.

Last year, she and the team prepared 570 boxes – but even at that, the number of boxes for children in the 2-4 age group was less than for other age groups.

Mary is currently looking for donations of crayons and of small toy cars, or other items suitable for inclusion in a shoebox including teddies. The teddies and toy cars can be secondhand, but they must be small and they must be in good condition. Anyone who wishes to donate some can either ring Mary or leave them in the porch of her house.

Items can also be left in a box at the back of the church in Tyrrellspass.

Happily, the knitters in the area have made hundreds of knitted hats, and Mary also received a generous donation of gloves from a lady in Castlepollard.

The boxes will all have to be completed by the end of next week as they have to be at the collection depot in Mullingar by November 9.

Anyone wishing to get in touch with Mary can do so at 086 3850258.