Ongoing Programs
In addition to responding to emergencies worldwide, Samaritan’s Purse includes several ongoing ministries.
• Operation Christmas Child - created in 1990 by Dave Cook - is a 'global Christmas gift exchange' project operated by Samaritan's Purse. Each November it opens thousands of locations, typically at churches or schools, to collect shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies, personal items, and other gifts. These boxes are then distributed as Christmas gifts, accompanied by Christian literature. From 1993 through 2008, some 69 million gift boxes have been handed out in more than 130 countries.
• Disaster Relief responds to emergency situations. In the United States and Canada, Samaritan’s Purse mobilizes teams of volunteers to repair houses damaged by natural disasters. The organization has four tractor-trailer units loaded with emergency supplies and equipment. Each can serve as a self-contained base in a disaster zone.
• World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse, was founded in 1977 by brothers Dr. Richard Furman and Dr. Lowell Furman to enable doctors to serve short-term assignments at overwhelmed missionary hospitals. The Post-Residency Program supports physicians as they serve two-year terms in mission hospitals and consider becoming career missionaries. World Medical Mission also operates a warehouse that ships equipment and supplies to mission hospitals and provides them with technical support.
• Children’s Heart Project provides surgery for children born with heart defects in countries where proper care is not available. Children are brought to North America, where services are donated by hospitals, surgeons, and host families and churches..
• HIV/AIDS Projects mobilize private, church, corporate, and government resources to respond to the AIDS pandemic. In partnership with the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, Samaritan’s Purse is working in East Africa with education about the disease and abstinence-based prevention programs.
• Turn on the Tap is a campaign to provide safe drinking water in the developing world. Samaritan’s Purse-Canada holds the license to build BioSand Water Filters, which can provide a family with a perpetual source of safe drinking water. Samaritan’s Purse also drills and repairs wells, sets up large-scale filters in disaster zones, and helps to educate communities in hygiene and sanitation.
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