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by Matt Blistan, GBU National Vice PresidentIn May, 2000 the National Fraternal Congress of America, initiated a national volunteer day called “Join Hands Day.” Since that time, many fraternal benefit societies have held volunteer activities each year where youth and adult volunteers “join hands” to work together on a project to benefit other non-profit groups or their communities.
The Greater Beneficial Union of Pittsburgh (GBU) has been one of those societies. In the past we have promoted several Join Hands Day projects. The “Buds, Suds and Grub” fundraiser, which is being held again this year, is an activity which involves selling potted spring-time flowers, a car wash and grilling and selling hot dogs and hamburgers, all on the same day. All funds benefit the youth activities of the Greater Pittsburgh Kinder Klub which supports children’s activities within our community. We also featured the fine efforts of our GBU/LFA Division in their collection of food items for the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Members over the last ten years of this wonderful project have collected and delivered between 10 and 20 tons of food each year. The GBU/LFA “Food-A-Thon” is now twenty-one years old!This year for Join Hands Day we chose a project that would physically show our appreciation to our brave servicemen and women serving us in Iraq and Afghanistan. We titled this project “Operation Reach Out… delivering a little piece of home to our troops.” Even though Join Hands Day is only one day we expanded it to a four month long campaign culminating with the final boxing and shipping of items from our Home Office collection on Join Hands Day.
Starting in January we promoted this project to our GBU districts. It was received with “open arms.” Districts were given the option of collecting and shipping items directly to overseas soldiers or to send funds into the Home Office for us to purchase and ship items to soldiers we received names for.
Operation Reach Out was far beyond successful! MANY districts collected and shipped items themselves and MANY districts sent funds into the Home Office.
Participation and support of this project was amazing. GBU members from across the country showed their support of our troops by participating in this project. Thanks to local Pittsburgh newspaper articles about the project we received MANY donations from organizations and members from our Home Office community. Even students from local schools and churches got involved by writing “heart-touching” letters of support to the soldiers. If these letters have the same effect as they did with us, I am sure that our brave soldiers will have a tear or two in their eyes.
Upon our invitation, our local Congressman of the 18th District in Pittsburgh, Congressman Tim Murphy spent his Saturday morning showing his concern for our overseas servicemen and women by filling boxes with us.
Using the funds donated to the Home Office and the items donated, we purchased enough items to fill 466 boxes of personal health items and snacks for 466 of our brave soldiers! INCREDIBLE!!! In addition we filled another three boxes full of hundreds of beanie babies and shipped them to the Military’s Civil Affairs group to be distributed to the Iraqi children.
I’d like to close this article with the text from two of the many letters we received in this project. The first is a letter received from one of the soldier recipients of one of our Operation Reach Out packages.
“On behalf of the men and women of the Operational Support Airlift Command I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and the members of the GBU for your wonderful gift. It is very much appreciated by everyone in our Unit. It is nice to know that we have the support of people and organizations such as yours. Some of the items you sent are very hard to come by over here such as the Blistex and lip balm. The PX over here usually sells out as fast as it comes in. With the warm weather fast approaching, items such as this will be in great demand. Thanks to you and your organization, we are now ahead of the game. The cookies were another big hit. I don't think they lasted five minutes before they were gone. I thought I saw chewing gum in the package also but it was gone in a flash. As you can tell, everything you sent was very well received and very much appreciated.I want to thank you all again for everything you've done and to let you know how much it is appreciated by everyone here. We will be coming home several months from now but gifts like these are the things we will always remember. It's nice to know that people still care enough to show their support in ways such as this. Thank you all!"
Sincerely,
Mike Swisshelm
The second letter is one of the student letters we received to include in the boxes for our soldiers. This letter, written by student, Alayna H., sums up the purpose of Operation Reach Out much better than I ever could.
“Dear soldier, I would just like to tell you how thankful I am that you are protecting my freedom. That is something that not a lot of people would do. I hope you keep a positive attitude always, we need you. You guys/girls over there have truly made it possible so that I can have rights; rights that you’ve give us and not let anyone taken away. Again I’d like to thank you for your service.” JGBU Operation Reach Out Photos
Greater Beneficial Union
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1-800-765-4GBU or (412) 884-5100
Fax: (412) 884-9815
E-mail: info@gbu.org
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This page was last updated on Thursday, June 14, 2007