Give a Kid a Pencil...

Back-to-school sales have been going on for a few weeks now, and school supplies are at the lowest prices of the year. One indirect way to help our troops is to send them school supplies for the children of Afghanistan and Iraq. Providing these kids with an education and a means to a better life will ultimately benefit our troops and our country.
One organization that provides these needed items to the children of war-torn Afghanistan and other countries began in 2005. It is called Operation Dreamseed and was founded by then-Captain Todd Schmidt, one of my Anysoldier contacts when he was deployed in Kandahar. An excerpt from the ODS website states: "For the first time, children of Afghanistan have the opportunity to receive an education, to have hope for a better future, and pursue their dreams. Operation Dreamseed is dedicated to distributing school supplies directly to Afghani children through the help of the U.S. Army. The program is a wonderful way for you and your family to fight alongside our soldiers, not taking lives, but planting seeds of hope in the minds of a young generation." Go to http://www.operationdreamseed.org/ for information on where and how to send items through this program.
You can also go to http://www.anysoldier.com/ on the "Where to Send" page. Scroll down the page to where it says "Click HERE to search anysoldier.com contacts." Using the box that says "requests and e-mail contents", type in school suppplies and click on SEARCH. This will give you a list of all the AS contacts who would like to receive these items for distribution to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan. You can read their individual posts and choose to whom you'd like to donate.
Three years ago Maj. Sean Gustafson wrote to me from Herat, Afghanistan where he and his group of Minnesota National Guard engineers were building schools and other projects for the people there. He said, "It is by helping the children here that we will ultimately help these folks make their country safe and democratic. Give a kid here a pencil and you've about doubled his net worth." You can see many pictures of children receiving donated school supplies if you look up Todd Schmidt and Sean Gustafson under "Old Contacts" on anysoldier.com
In Sean's words, "Happy people don't join the Taliban or Alqaeda."
Please help if you can.