Operation Spread Holiday Joy

[Hermione_]

So Operation Spread Holiday Joy will be a month long project to encourage people to donate anything they may have to offer to their own communities. I will be running a counter to try to measure how many hours, dollars, bags of clothing, blankets, anything we can count to see how much we can collectively give throughout the month. (more information on the graphic below)

I am running a tumblr throughout this project http://inflatehearts.tumblr.com/

If anyone has any experiences or stories they would like to share on the matter and wants to post them on the blog send them my way. inflatehearts@gmail.com

I will be writing up something today or tomorrow about how to choose a charity, and some thoughts I have about avoiding certain ones (such as Goodwill). If anyone else has input on any of this, please share.

Thank you so much for taking time to read this and I hope you pass the word along to anyone, they don't have to be in the camming community.

 

[JerryBoBerry]

May I add another charity, in this vein, I've been involved with for years now for those in America. It's called anysoldier. Basically it's a website setup to get requests from soldiers that may be deployed anywhere in the world from any branch. Quite often the requests are for simple things. Books to read, juice powder mixes for their water, socks, feminine products, toiletries, snacks, chap sticks for dry locations... Basically just day to day luxury items they've been missing, or only have access to inferior versions from the military.

The site has plenty of information on it about what to ship, what you can't and where to ship it to. My usual method is to buy a $0.98 cardboard box from walmart (about the size of a shoe box) and fill that with items. You don't even have to ship it out of the country. There's two bases right here in the country you would ship to depending on which half of the country you're on. Then they ship it to the soldier wherever they are. That sized box can be stuffed for as little as $20 worth of items if you want and shipping should be that or less from pretty much anywhere in the country. So it's not that bad to help out people.

One note, be sure to read the letters. You MUST ship to a direct person and there are things listed in the letters as to what they need. The military doesn't do care packages to general locations or groups. So get the person's name and address from the letter. Check out the FAQ on the site for all the basic information. For examples: don't ship items that melt because it may be going to a desert, don't ship chemicals like deodorant and food in the same box. Candy that smells like Speed Stick really suck.

Anyway, if you're at all interested, here's the website. http://anysoldier.com/index.cfm