A Magi box is a medium sized shoebox filled with tiny toys and hygiene products for children in impoverished areas. These boxes are collected for children to open on Christmas and Harding now has a share in that joy.

Magi boxes are a product of Healing Hands International, an international relief and aid organization based out of Nashville, Tenn. The boxes are shipped to different parts of the world for children who need them, while also providing a gift the children would not receive otherwise.

The 2012 Harding in Zambia program group got behind Magi boxes this year, because Healing Hands has decided to send the boxes to the Namwianga Mission in Zambia, which the students work with closely.

Janice Bingum, a nurse practitioner who joins the Zambia group every fall, sent out an email to the 2012 HIZ group over the summer encouraging them to get behind the project and send gifts directly to the babies they cared for. About week after this email was sent, according to junior Chelsey Sullivan, two students, junior Kelly Donaldson who was in the HIZ group and senior Steven Albers who had been involved in other missions in Africa, who happened to be interning together in Nashville visited Healing Hands, met and talked with a woman named Cindy Herring who worked there, watched the video that was shown in chapel last week and knew Harding had to be involved.

“After the video we were sold and knew we have to do this because not only am I really passionate about Zambia because I spent a semester there and those are my kids, but [Cindy] was so excited too, and just knowing how excited she was got me excited and opened my eyes to how real this was,” Donaldson said.

According to Donaldson the Magi boxes collected by Harding are going straight to the Namwianga Mission.

Donaldson and Albers set out to get other HIZ people involved in order to get the project off the ground. An early responder was Sullivan who with the other two tried to spread the word to club presidents and the Student Association over the summer since the boxes are traditionally due in the beginning of September.

Due to the semester starting August 20, Sullivan said it wasn’t plausible to get the boxes to Healing Hands by the preferred deadline, so they are to be given after Harding’s Lectureship since a Healing Hands representative is going to be there.

This gave the group an extra few weeks and the boxes were collected Sept. 13 and 14 in the student center along with $10 for the shipping cost.

The whole HIZ team is so excited to still be giving back to “their babies” and hopes to support every child.

As Sullivan said, “I want there to be, at the end of the day, enough for every child to get a box on Christmas.”