I received the following email from a good friend of mine on another board, whose husband is in the military. I offered to re-post it here, since she's not a DU'er. If you're interested in helping out with this, please PM me, and I'll send you her email address, to get in touch about where to send books and DVDs. Please also let me know if you have any questions about this effort, and I'll do my best to get you more information ASAP. Personally, I'm going to go through my books this week, and send her some stuff via media mail. Thanks in advance! Please help me keep this kicked! :)
I've recently started helping out at an online organization called booksforsoldiers.com. They take requests from soldiers who are currently deployed and post them on a private, identity-confirmed message board where those of us who either a) have a .mil email acct or b) have our identity confirmed by a notary, can fill their requests. 90% of the requests are for movies and books. So I cleaned out my DVD collection and my paperback collection and I am slowly shipping them off to those who ask.
And now I am looking for hand-outs. If you have DVDs you will never watch again or piles of old paperbacks that you just can't stand to throw away, I would love to have them to send to these guys and girls in Iraq. Some of them are on their second or third deployment over there and their requests say things like, "I'll take anything you can send that will take my mind of this place." I know quite keenly that it is only luck that has kept from being over there. I also know how it can feel when you live with scarcity. Sometimes those few things you just *really* want can become the center of all that you think about.
I'm going to try to build up a nice "inventory" of stuff in the storeroom so I can ship out 8-10 boxes weekly. These guys sometimes request very specific books/movies and other times just genres, and still other times just "anything" will do.
You know me, I don't "do" volunteer stuff very often. But this one touched me since it is really all about providing soldiers with some mental escape routes from their circumstances. I know if I were deployed, I would probably do nothing but read and sleep in my idle time...anything to get away from the fact that I was in a war in the desert in the Middle East :(
So yea, if you have them to spare...send them to me, please? :)
Required disclaimer: The administrators of Democratic Underground have given permission for one discussion thread on this topic. The administrators of Democratic Underground make no claims regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of this fundraising effort. Permission was granted by Skinner on 2/25/07, and the moderators have been notified.
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