All year long, 12-year-old Rachel Quick saves her allowance and the money she makes from dogsitting for the Christmas season. Then, as the holidays approach, she heads out to spend all of it on presents.

But unlike many kids her age, Quick doesn’t use the money for friends and family. Instead, she invests it all in small toys, hygiene items and school supplies for other kids all over the world as part of Operation Christmas Child.

This year alone, Quick is sending out more than 200 shoebox-sized boxes filled with gifts to all corners of the world, from Panama to Nepal to the Philipines.

“It just makes me really happy to help other kids,” she said. “I really like it.”

Quick began sending out the boxes three years ago after her mother took her and her brother to WalMart and let them fill a shoebox with small items to send out as part of the program, a project started by Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian Relief organization founded by Franklin Graham.

“Rachel just decided she was going to send more than one,” said mother Sharon Quick.

Rachel convinced her parents to match her donation and that first year sent out 100 boxes.

As the project has grown every year, her parents continue to help support their daughter’s giving, though Sharon admits with a laugh that the first year they thought “How much is she going to earn? She’s 10.”

But the next year, Rachel sent out 150 packages and this year sent out more tan 235 of the gift boxes.

This year, the family estimates the total amount spent on gifts and shipping topped out near $5,000, which buys a lot of small toys and gifts. The family also accepts donations for the program from members of their church, Wabash Presbyterian in Enumclaw.

There are now so many boxes, in fact, that Quick has taken to shopping online for items, instead of cleaning out the shelves at the local stores three or four times to ensure that each box is the same.

Then, when November rolls around and it’s time to pack the boxes, the Quicks host a slumber party for rachel and her friends, who set up around the house, assembly line style and help pack the boxes.

“Every room had a station in it,” Sharon said of her home the night of the big packing party.

Each box is packed to the hilt with toys, shirts, homemade stuffed animals and school supplies.

“There’s an art to packing these,” Sharon said, watching her daughter skillfully fill one of the gift boxes. “It just has to fit.”

For example, a box designed for a girl, ages 2-4, contains a dress up skirt, a knitted animal, a SpongeBob SquarePants toothbrush, a coloring book, crayons, a small rubber ducky, play doh, hair ties, soap, a small home craft-making kit, a t-shirt, a wash cloth and a pencil box filled with school supplies.

Rachel estimated it took her and her friends about five or six hours to pack them all this year.

Rachel, who is homeschooled, said she doesn’t really remember why she started the program, but said she very much enjoys it now and hopes to continue for years to come.

“I guess I wanted to help out kids and especially wanted to share the Gospel with them,” she said, adding “it’s lot of fun.”

Sharon said her kids have a lot of stuff already and don;t really need any more and she is proud of them for spending their money the way they do (Rachel’s brother, for example, bought his sister nearly $100 in birthday gifts this year because she never spends any of her money on herself).

“I’m very proud of her. I’m blessed to have a child who’s not selfish and wants to help other people,” she said. “It’s going to be interesting to see what she does when she’s older.”

(For the record, Rachel has no idea yet what she wants to be when she grows up.)

Rachel looks forward to tracking the boxes again this year, and included a personal note in many of the boxes. Usually, the kids do not write back, but last year she received a picture of a little girl in the Philippines, holding her box and smiling from ear to ear.

But she hopes each child gets as much joy out of each of her little boxes that she gets putting them together.

“They’ll probably be really excited because I know many have never gotten a  present before so this will be really, really special for them,” she said.

Click here for more information on Operation Christmas Child.