Weihnachtspackerlaktion (WPA) — (RTAT)

Service Name: Weihnachtspackerlaktion (Christmas Gift Drive)
Association: Round Table Austria
Category: Community Service, Public Event, Christmas Convoys
Status: Ongoing, Annual basis
Website: Official Page🔗

The Weihnachtspackerlaktion is a volunteer-driven Christmas Service Project by Round Table, Ladies’ Circle, Club41, and Agora in Austria, in collaboration with their counterparts in Romania that sends gift-filled shoeboxes to children in need to the Eastern European Country bringing joy to children who rarely receive presents.

Weihnachtspäckchenkonvoi is an Austrian German compound word.
It literally means: Weihnachts → Christmas, Packerl → little packages / parcels, Aktion → campaign/drive. So the full meaning is: “Christmas Parcel Campaign.”

 

Due to the enormous logistical effort, the planning of the WPA begins in summer. Around June the local tablers reach out to their community to ask if they are willing to participate in this community service project, contacting schools, kindergartens and other institutions, explaining the aims of the project and the spirit of “Kinder helfen Kindern” (Children helping Children). Around September, at the begin of the new school year, those that are willing to participate are contacted again, receiving all the necessary information and instructions, such as:

• Types of parcels: girls, boys, unisex (suitable for both)
• Age groups: 0–2 years, 3–6 years, 7–10 years and 10–14 years
• Does: suitable gifts and sought after items like games, garment, school equipment
• Don’ts: what not to put into the parcel, like used gifts, German books
• Recommended parcel size
• Death line for the collection

By the End of October till the Mid of November, the biggest task for the volounters begins: all of the parcels are collected in 4 different regional warehouses to be sorted, counted and repacked in the bigger transport boxes, needed to palletise all of the gifts. During this process, the single Packerl are also checked, to make sure that all the gifts are equal and fair. To light or to heavy packages, are carefully opened and if deemed necessary, adjusted and repacked. Contrary to the German Convoy the parcels are sent with a logistics company to the central hub in Bucharest, where the parcels are sorted and redirected to the secondary locations of Campulung in the Muntenia Region, and Galati in the Moldova Region or, and from there on to orphanages, schools, and rural communities, bringing joy to children who rarely receive presents.

At the End of November, the first week of December up to 18 volunteers departure from Vienna to drive the approximately 1.150km to Bucharest, where they spent a week, spreading the Christmas magic. Sorting the parcels for their assigned spots, loading up the trucks each day, waking up early in the morning to departure for the more rural locations and still be on time for school hours on often very bumpy roads, no matter the weather conditions, is hard word, but the reactions of the kids, the smiles and the glow in their eyes when they receive their parcels washes away the fatigue in an instant, giving the volunteers the biggest Christmas present themselves.

Delivered Parcels

Year	Parcels
2018	10.823
2019	11.033
2020	9.818
2021	11.438
2022	14.457
2023	16.313
2024	18.659
2025	19.393