Charity of the Month: cards needed for our soliders!

The charity I have selected to concentrate on for November 2010 is the awesome organization From Our Hearts, which sends thousands of blank handmade cards to be used by our deployed armed services personnel to send to their loved ones back home.

Regina, Marti and Susan and the rest of the gang at From Our Hearts have processed more than 50,000 cards and card fronts this year alone, distributing them through chaplain friends into the hands of grateful soldiers. They currently have 29 contacts accepting boxes of cards all over the world.

I am honored to feature this worthy cause on my blog and help spread the word! Together we can provide comfort and encouragement to our military and their families. I actually cried when I was reading some of the grateful letters and notes that this organization has received from servicemembers.

These cards do not need to be patriotic, as they are not intended for the soliders themselves, but for the soldiers to use. From Our Hearts is currently collecting Valentines–yes, you heard me–so if you want to help in a specific way (they always need everyday cards) you could get out the pink and red and go to town.There is a little calendar of deadlines if you want to keep it in mind for other holidays, too. They need time to process what they received and re-pack them for shipment overseas, get them delivered, distributed, and still have time to be mailed back for the appropriate occasions!

I hope you will visit the From Our Hearts website and participate along with me–if not this November, then soon–and if you have cards to add to the stack I will be sending in at the end of the month, be sure to get them to me by Thanksgiving. If you are suffering from lack of craft time, you can donate via PayPal and help From Our Hearts offset the tremendous shipping costs involved with this project. They can also use envelopes, adhesives and plain cardstock for turning donated card fronts into full cards, and they accept pens and notepads as well.

So many ways we could easily help–please consider making From Our Hearts your group's cause for the month. This would be a wonderful Girl Scouts or Ladies' Group project. Thank you for taking the time to read about my Charity of the Month project–together, we can make a difference!