Southern Region launches service project for members activated by the military
For the past two years, Southern Region has remembered activated military personnel by sending them greeting cards on various holidays such as Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Christmas.
Sue Grimm McCoy, Southern Region Vice President and member of the Lancaster City EA, headed up the project. She said that this year the region wanted to do more. “The last mailing was addressed to the families of those serving. We enclosed a letter asking for the member’s APO address. Additionally, we asked all our local presidents to forward the names and addresses of any of their members that had been deployed/activated. We don’t want to miss anyone”
This fall locals were given lists of items that service members can use. In order to avoid collecting too much of any particular item, the list was divided according to clusters. Each local was asked to provide items that appeared under their UniServ’s name. The items suggested varied from pre-moistened hand wipes to batteries, from eye wash to hard candy. All locals were asked to provide pre-paid phone cards – something all soldiers could use to call home.
Rather than collect more of the items on the list, Southern Region staff opted to make a monetary contribution so that items not collected in sufficient quantities could be purchased. The funds also could be used to help members’ families.
McCoy said that while the care boxes would arrive for the Christmas holiday, the region didn’t view this as just a holiday project. “We asked our locals to bring their collected items to our November House of Delegates, but the project is really something that will continue all year. We’ll do another collection at the Spring House of Delegates and continue to collect names of newly deployed members between now and then.”
Pictured: Bryan Hauser, CVEA, Brian Griffith and Amy Still, CDEA, and Sue McCoy, SR Vice President, sort through some of the items collected at the recent Southern Region HOD for military care boxes.