I just want to take this opportunity, as we have arrived in the holiday season, to point you in some great directions to show your support for the troops...
• United Service Organizations (
www.uso.org) provides Internet-equipped military lounges and celebrity entertainment tours inspired by the late Bob Hope. The group also creates boxes of requested items like sunscreen and travel-sized toiletries (
www.usocares.org). Funds also go toward its Operation Phone Home (800-876-7469), a program that provides troops with international phone cards to keep in touch with loved ones back home.
• Veterans of Foreign Wars (
www.vfw.org) provides support, such as counseling and financial help, through its Military Assistance Program. Large groups can participate in Adopt-a-Unit, a project that allows communities to create goody packages to send to hometown troop members and their families. The organization also has an Emergency Relief Fund to deal with unexpected domestic disasters of troops and their families. "We stepped in to help one girl whose home burned down in October, the night before she was to deploy," says Bud Haney, director of the Military Assistance Program. The VFW also helps families and service members communicate via its international calling card program, Operation Uplink (
www.operationuplink.org).
• Fisher House (
www.fisherhouse.org), an organization based in Rockville, Md., operates "comfort homes," inexpensive lodging on the grounds of 23 military and Veterans Administration medical centers for the families of injured service members. "Travel, hotels, food, lost pay, it all adds up," says Jerry Newberry, VFW director of communications. Donations can be designated to sponsor families or to pay for a new facility under construction at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., which currently houses most soldiers injured in Iraq.
• Gift of Groceries allows donors to buy gift certificates that can be redeemed by troops' families at military commissaries. The Air Force Aid Society, Fisher House, and the USO sponsor the program; donations are accepted via
www.commissaries.com.
• Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. (
www.taps.org) provides resources to family members and friends coping with the loss of a service member. Donations help underwrite an annual grief counseling camp, a toll-free hotline, support-group meetings, and a mentor program that allows grieving families to connect with other families which have lost relatives.
• Operation Hero Miles (
www.heromiles.org) allows Americans to donate frequent-flier miles on major airlines to cover the domestic-travel expenses of service members on voluntary leave. Although Congress recently appropriated $55 million to cover this growing expense, the funds won't be available for this holiday season and won't last more than a handful of months.
• I'd also like to throw in
www.toysfortots.org. The mission of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.