LifeSavers for Soldiers

Website

www.militaryconnections.org

What is your idea to address an unmet need of service members, veterans and their families?

Life Savers Celebrates 100 Years!! During World War II Life Savers accompanied soldiers in their rations as reminders of home. Other candy makers even donated their sugar rations to allow Life Savers to stay in production for the troops. Help us carry on a tradition since World War II. Military Connections is going to take a sandwich size Ziploc bag and fill it will individually wrapped Lifesavers Candy. We are also going to include a note “To My Favorite Lifesaver.” It is a small token of appreciation to show the troops that we appreciate their sacrifices. Our goal is to ship 100,000 Packs of LifeSavers.

What specific population do you plan to work with? What is their unmet need?

We will work with Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airman that are stationed in Afghanistan. There are hundreds of troops that have no connection to family or friends back in the US. We will ship the LifeSavers in their care packages to remind them that they are not forgotten. Our LifeSaver packages will be the only box that many of these men and women receive.

What is your implementation plan, and how would the $1,000 be used?

We are collecting donations of LifeSavers and Ziploc Bags throughout the community. We will also use money from the grant to purchase the candies and bags. Once we have all the supplies collected we will put a notice out to the community looking for volunteers to stuff bags, label the bags, and package into boxes for shipping.

$1000
Lifesavers: $250
Ziploc Bags: $200
Labels: $50
Shipping: $500

How are volunteers the key ingredient to your solution?

Without volunteers this project would not be possible. We hope to ship over 100,000 bags of LifeSavers and we need volunteers to collect donations, stuff bags, and pack shipping boxes. We anticipate needing about 100 volunteers over the course of one week to complete the project. Our local senior citizen center has offered their recreation room for our use.

Discussion

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