OPERATION GRATITUDE Community Service Project
For the last three years, Aaron School 45th Street has participated in “The Great Halloween Candy Give Back” to benefit our troops through Operation Gratitude. Operation Gratitude is an organization founded in 2003 that strives to lift spirits by sending more than 200,000 care packages a year to Veterans, First Responders, New Recruits, Wounded Heroes, and to individually named United States service members deployed overseas and to their families waiting at home. Since Operation Gratitude began, volunteers have shipped over 1,600,000 care packages! Each package sent is filled with food, entertainment, hygienic products, hand-made items, as well as personal letters of support and appreciation. Every Halloween, Operation Gratitude collects candy and sends out individual candy care packages to our troops serving overseas. There are candy collection sites (typically dentists’ offices, businesses, schools, or clubs) located all over the United States.
From November 1st through November 4th of this year, M206 7th graders organized a candy collection at Aaron School. Students were encouraged to bring in any unopened Halloween candy that wasn’t going to be saved or eaten after Halloween. The school was buzzing with excitement once Halloween arrived because they were excited to help the troops! Each day, students from M206 volunteered to go from classroom to classroom to collect candy. When they returned, they put the accumulated candy in designated boxes. On Friday, November 4th, Helen Rooney, the head teacher of M206, took all three full boxes of candy to Long Island to drop it off at a dentist’s office. That office will then ship it to Operation Gratitude in California, where the candy will be distributed into individual care packages. Thank you Aaron School for another year of helping support a great cause!
If you would like to learn more about Operation Gratitude, please visit their website at https://www.operationgratitude.com.