Happy New Year everyone and Happy Anniversary to us!!
Hope everyone had a great holiday season with family, friends and loved ones. With my holiday decorations put away for another year, it is time to get back to the care packing business. My shoppers and I have scoured the "after Christmas" sales and stocked up on many of the holiday stockings, mini trees, cards and decorations for next season. Amazing how much money we can save doing this and I love a good bargain! We look for items that can be sent for other holidays as well....red lights for Valentine's day, blue for 4th of July, etc.
January marks our 5th anniversary since the start of Airborne Angel Cadets of Texas. We adopted our first platoon of 35 soldiers from Ft. Bragg in January 2005 and haven't looked back. 2009 was a banner year for us with over 2500 boxes sent, reaching over 5000 soldiers thru our rotations of 12 adopted platoons almost doubling what was sent in 2008. Some of our past recipients have returned for another deployment and have contacted us asking for our care packages once again. Of course, we say "yes" since they are now part of "our family" and we support them for the duration of their deployment!
Many of our soldiers are in the more remote locations or FOB's (forward operating bases) with very little amenities or access to basic goods such as deodorant, toothpaste, soap, etc. These are the soldiers that we try to reach and assist. Of our cash donations in 2009, more than 50% went to postage costs, which remains our biggest challenge. Trying to get boxes directly into the APO system to save on those costs has proved challenging and unsuccessful.
If anyone has any ideas out there or can assist us, please let us know. We would love to be able to use those funds to purchase items that soldiers need or have requested.
