Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service joins rural ambulances in Operation Christmas Child

MEDIA RELEASE:

WINNIPEG November 15, 2006 - On Friday, November 17, 2006, the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) will be participating in Operation Christmas Child, a program aimed at bringing joy and hope to children in desperate situations around the world through gift-filled shoeboxes. Three spare WFPS units – two ambulances and a Multiple Incident Response Vehicle – will be staffed by off-duty paramedics, and will join with rural ambulance services in collecting shoeboxes. The boxes will be filled with toys, schools supplies, hygiene items and small gifts, destined for underprivileged children worldwide suffering the effects of poverty, sickness, war or natural disaster.

WFPS units will be collecting shoeboxes at various schools and daycares across the city on Friday and will join up with the rural services at 1:00 p.m. at the intersection of Portage Avenue and Moray for a parade of ambulances. The parade, in recognition of the effort of individuals to prepare and gather the shoeboxes, will see the ambulances travel down Portage Avenue to Main Street, over the Disraeli Bridge on to Henderson Highway and to their destination drop-off point of Eastview Community Church, located at 3500 DeVries Avenue.

WFPS has participated in Operation Christmas Child throughout the past four years. This year, in conjunction with the Paramedic Association of Manitoba, 17 ambulances from Winnipeg, Interlake, South Eastman, North Eastman and Central Regional Health Authorities will be collecting an estimated 5,000 shoeboxes from 40 schools throughout the province.

Operation Christmas Child is the world’s largest children’s Christmas project. Since 1993, more than 46 million shoeboxes have been hand delivered to needy children in 125 countries. In Canada alone, over 5.7 million boxes have been collected. In 2006, shoebox gifts from Canada will be distributed in 14 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Senegal, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Haiti.