Objective: Kristi’s Hope partnered with the community to collect Christmas stockings and stocking stuffers to fill and ship off to deployed troops. We also had several classrooms and girl-scout troops volunteer their time to create pictures/letters/cards to include in the stockings.
Result: For about 3 weeks donations were dropped off and volunteers started RSVP’ing to help fill the stockings. On Saturday November 21st local volunteers met at the park to fill 382 stockings with donated items such as hygiene products, fun snacks, healthy snacks, entertainment items like puzzles, books, games etc. and several letters/cards drawings thanking the soldiers for their service/sacrifice.
On Monday November 23rd the stockings were boxed up and ready to ship, but we ran into a hick up. The gal who we were working with at Operation Give passed away and no one was ready to fill in her spot and get the packages shipped out. We frantically reached out to the community for help and a volunteer named Cheryl from The American Legion in Newport Beach stepped up and agreed to take the stockings. We were able to get some shipped off to deployed troops, some were given to local Marines who are stationed far away from family this holiday season and some where given to Wounded Warrior Barracks.
Here is one of the thank you letters we received:
“... As a former Marine, I have contacts at Camp Pendleton. The rest was heart warming. We delivered the boxes to the 5th Marines yesterday. Some are also going to the Wounded Warrior Barracks at Camp Pendleton. We were surprised at the number of stockings as well as the quality of the contents. The Marines were very happy as this kind gesture will let many of our young warriors know that people are thinking of them at this very special time of year. I salute you and others involved. It is obvious a great deal of effort went into it. “
Here are some additional photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.914104112005109.1073741841.629137777168412&type=1&hc_location=ufi
