Napa’s latest holiday collection drive for military care packages is underway as organizers say the need for them is growing.
Operation: With Love from Home is accepting donations of cash and merchandise to stock as many as 1,000 care packages — about double the Napa nonprofit’s original goal for the holidays. The effort will culminate in a packing bee Dec. 9 at CrossWalk Community Church in Napa, after which boxes of snacks, personal items and handmade Christmas cards will be mailed to troops ahead of the Christmas and New Year’s season.
While most American troops have been pulled from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts after nearly two decades, the director of Operation: With Love from Home described mounting requests for reminders of home from service members in other parts of the world.
“I have never seen so many requests come in,” Liz Alessio, a Napa City Council member, said Wednesday. “We usually get two or three requests a month; now we’re getting two or three requests some days.”
Despite military pullbacks from the Middle East, Alessio speculated the new demand for holiday packages from home may stem from the increased stress felt by Americans serving in uniform in areas close to hotspots of strife — including the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip.
“There’s a real need our service members have, both (for) the items in the care packages and for the morale boosts and support they need in this very difficult time,” she said of this year’s drive, which began Oct. 30.
The need for a connection to home is especially acute for the younger people serving in the military, Alessio added.
“Many of them have never left their hometown, let alone their home country” before enlisting, said Alessio, whose son was deployed to Djibouti and Afghanistan during five years in the Marine Corps. “So it creates a lot of fear, a lot of loneliness and additional pressure.”
Requests for this year’s holidays have come from military members based in Poland, Lithuania, Qatar, Djibouti, Romania and Israel, among other countries, according to Alessio.
Collections will be taken until at least Dec. 4, but Alessio said donations likely will be accepted through packing day five days later because of lagging collections early in the drive. Organizers also are accepting monetary donations, both to buy more items and to cover the cost of postage for the 9-pound gift boxes.
The care package campaign began in 2007 in Napa, where employees of Queen of the Valley Medical Center first packed holiday gift boxes for overseas troops. That drive eventually gave rise to Operation: With Love from Home, a nonprofit that works year-round and estimates it will send about 2,000 packages this year.
The nonprofit has set up collection bins at five locations in Napa and Yountville, as well as at five local school campuses. Organizers seek donations of snacks, clothing and other items, including beef jerky, nut and trail mixes, disposable razors, toothbrushes, deodorant, boot socks, T-shirts, wet wipes, first-aid items, and AA and AAA alkaline batteries.
Items will be assembled into packages suitable for either men or women in the field, with each box also containing a holiday card hand-lettered by a Napa student or resident, Alessio said.
Volunteers in the care package drive are hoping to collect as many goods as possible, according to Alessio — both to ensure timely gifts for troops and to ensure that all who request the packages can receive them.
“Donations have been minimal, and I’m concerned about what we’ll be able to do this time,” she said. “It’s a lack of awareness that we have service members supporting these regions where there’s conflict and war.”
___
(c) 2023 Napa Valley Register
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
