At Briarcliff Manor School District, just about everything is a team effort. Recently, Briarcliff High School’s Red Cross Club conducted a holiday drive and, in a collaborative effort with Briarcliff Middle School, Todd Elementary School and the Girl Scouts of Briarcliff, donated care packages to military personnel serving overseas.
“The Briarcliff High School Red Cross Club started this initiative back in 2014 and was able to send one care package to a platoon serving in Afghanistan,” said club advisor and English teacher Karen McCarthy.
Since then, the club has grown its reach and partnered with a local organization called From Home to Heroes, which matches people with soldiers overseas, enabling them to send care packages directly to those serving abroad.
“With many service members and veterans separated from their families this holiday season due to deployments and hospital stays, the American Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes program empowers people to ‘Give Something That Means Something’ by sending a token of our appreciation and thanks to the members of the Armed Forces,” Ms. McCarthy said.
Recently, Club members held another holiday drive. They made holiday cards, collected various necessities and put together care packages to send to soldiers serving in the Middle East.
The initiative proved to be a success; the club received donations of Halloween candy, toiletries, games, cards and letters to send to our heroes serving abroad from all three schools, as well as the Girl Scouts.
In addition, the BHS Red Cross Club conducted fundraisers to raise money to ship the care packages abroad.
The result was that the club was able to adopt 25 soldiers, five sailors, and one airman and thus send a total of 31 care packages to them for the holidays.
“There are many soldiers overseas who lack many of the items that we often take for granted,” Ms. McCarthy said. “We are overwhelmed by the support that we received from all three schools this year. Briarcliff community members are so generous in their donations to this project.”
From Home to Heroes charity acknowledged the club on social media.
“We cannot thank you all enough! What an amazing group of young people. We appreciate every single one of you.”
