Volunteer/Mission Trip Opportunities – Part Eight – Christmas Boxes for Appalachia

Christmas Boxes for Appalachia
Each year over 2000 Christmas boxes are distributed throughout Appalachia, collected through Scarlette Jasper’s Olive Branch Ministries. Boxes have gone to Pineknot Elementary in McCreary County, Kentucky, and Oneida Elementary in Scott County, Tennessee and in Wayne, Clinton , Knox, Laurel, Whitley, and Pulaski Counties in Kentucky to children, teens, seniors, and families. The boxes are distributed through the school systems’ family resource centers. The directors of these centers know the children and their families.

The principal of Pine Knot Elementary School shared that these boxes may be the only gift some kids will get for Christmas.

They include needed items and fun items like: $10 gift cards, toiletries, gloves, hats, markers, toys, Legos, books, hair accessories for children, teens, seniors and families. (See attached list)

For more information contact, Scarlette Jasper: sjasper@cbf.net

Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/Olive-Branch-Ministries-766161053487938

Olive Branch Ministries
Olive Branch Mhttps://olivebranchministriesky.org/inistries was founded on the belief that every person deserves to experience the peace and tranquility of Christ’s love. At OBM, we strive to meet people’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that they may transition out of living in cycles of poverty and crisis – ministering in rural, central and southern Kentucky among the county’s material poor; resourcing families in crisis including the homeless, survivors of domestic violence, and those in urgent medical straits. One of the ways we do this is through financial counseling with families and individuals in one of the poorest regions of the United States to build sustainable budgets for their households. Our goal is for low-income persons to become self-sufficient in managing their finances so they may be freed from their debts and build more stable futures for their families.

It is our hope that this model becomes self-perpetuating for every family and individual that we serve so that attitudes of love, service, and inclusiveness will one day permeate our community and our world.

www.olivebranchministriesky.org

Scarlette Jasper
Scarlette Jasper is a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel serving with Together for Hope, CBF’s rural poverty initiative, in the Appalachian foothills of Southern and South Central Kentucky. A longtime champion for the economically disadvantaged, Scarlette ministers within some of the poorest counties in the United States. The majority of the counties in which Scarlette serves are considered “distressed” counties on the basis of low per capita income and high rates of poverty and unemployment.

Scarlette has been involved in nonprofit work with disadvantaged communities for more than 27 years, serving in leadership positions locally and nationally for various organizations.

https://www.classy.org/campaign/scarlette-jasper/c103225