Group Looking For Help Sending Care Packages Overseas

Wisconsin's 32nd Infantry Brigade Deployed To Iraq

Updated: 1:55 pm CDT June 19, 2009

Operation Homefront is looking for help sending care packages to troops serving overseas.

The group's main mission is to help families left behind in the U.S., but the group is trying to get packages to members of Wisconsin's Army National Guard 32nd Infantry Brigade, which was deployed to Iraq about a month ago.

The group has the care packages ready to send, but it doesn't have a way to get them there. The group needs to have specific Army Post Office, or APO, addresses. Without them, Operation Homefront can't send the packages because of security and privacy concerns.

Operation Homefront is asking people who know a soldier from the Madison area to send his or her address.

"If anybody knows anyone that has an APO address, you've got a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan overseas, we can use that address and start sending them care packages every month," said Sara Mikolajczak, statewide director of programs for Operation Homefront Wisconsin.

Mikolajczak packed her car full of care packages Thursday to ship overseas.

"In here we have 23 care packages for our troops overseas," said Mikolajczak Thursday. "These go to troops specifically from Wisconsin. In these boxes we've got all sorts of stuff, we've got beef jerky, candy, toothbrushes and cards from little kids."

Mikolajczak said she is inspired by the organization's mission to serve families left at home during war times, as well as supporting service members overseas.

“(We send things like) travel-sized board games; baby-wipes are big -- one of the easiest ways to stay clean out there," she said. "They're really very appreciative for anything we can do, and it really helps them to know that we back home are thinking about them -- especially people that don't even particularly know them."

The shipment is just one of many planned to be sent to the Middle East while the troops are there. But the group said it still needs specific addresses to which to send the boxes.

"We've got a lot of soldiers up in the La Crosse region; that's where Camp Douglas and Volk Field and Fort McCoy are. But in the Madison, Milwaukee, Fox Valley region, we haven't gotten a lot of addresses in yet," Mikolajczak said.

To learn more about how to help, visit the Operation Homefront Web site.

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