Throughout this month, Service Club was sponsored a drive of household items to send to troops overseas. These items included, but aren’t limited to: shampoo, conditioner, magazines, hand warmers, puzzles, energy bars and peanut butter crackers.

Most of the materials that the club asked for are everyday items that many people can take for granted. The troops overseas don’t have the luxury of getting these day to day items because many troops have difficulties accessing stores. Often, what they take with them will have to last a longtime because it can be hard for a troop’s family to send them items.

The idea of sending care packages to the troops this year came from the Service Club president, Senior Amanda Herzog.

“I have done this for a while with my mom; we just really wanted to expand the projects in order to get more donations this year,” Herzog said.

In the past, Herzog and her mother were able to make around 60 care packages and, this year, she was hoping to double that number. With this goal in mind, Herzog asked Service Club to join her on her mission to give back to the soldiers.

Service Club has been around for many years but it wasn’t until 1997 that Ms. Rita Kaplin brought the club back into full swing at Freedom. Service Club used to go on many school-funded trips, like going to nursing homes and baking cookies with the elderly. Because of the lack of funding for this organization, Service Club doesn’t take trips like these anymore.

This year, once again, the club is trying to do more volunteering and is planning on doing drives like Teen for Jeans. All the activities that are planned this year by Service Club are done through the students with guidance from Kaplin.

“It’s a student driven club,” Kaplin said.

In order to get as many students as possible to donate, Service Club came up with the idea of getting teachers to give extra credit to students who have donated. Most teachers agreed to this because they thought it was for a great cause. With this new incentive in place, the club is hoping that more students will get motivated to bring in their items for the troops.

“At first, I’ll be honest, I really wanted those bonus points, but then I heard stories about soldiers running out of basic necessities while overseas and how much it affected them. I have these things lying around the house, [with] no one using or even thinking about them, and if I can do anything to help them, even the smallest action, I feel like it’s my duty to,” Senior Madeline Kusich said.

Once all of the donations and the hand-written thank you letters from Mrs. Maria Porter’s class have been collected, they will be given to the Military Enrichment Program [M.E.P]. The M.E.P. will then distribute the care packages to the soldiers overseas.

Service Club worked this month to give back to the troops that give up so much for our country and asked the students to help them do this by donating to the cause.