Food is always needed, and there are many ways that you can provide food--among them:
- Load up priority mail containers with snacks that are packaged and don't require refrigeration, heating, and/or can-openers. These can be individual packages of munchies such as potato chips, nachos, Sun Chips, popcorn, trail mix, onion-ring-flavored snacks; single-serving packages of raisins; juices and ades in non-fragile, individual containers such as single-serving plastic bottles and juice boxes; sealed cups of shelf versions of gelatin dessert, pudding, and fruit in juice; any kind of candy, cookies, or other packaged-and-ready-to-open-and-enjoy dessert that won't melt in-transit; can-opener-not-needed containers of tuna/tuna salad--but no other kind of meat (most don't care for Vienna sausages, for example, so no use to send those); and be sure to include packages of plastic eating utensils (mostly, spoons).
- Send greeting cards in which you've enclosed certificates and gift cards to chain-type restaurants such as McDonald's that have locations in San Diego.
- Send donations--either by check or money-order using snail-mail or else by PayPal using e-mail.
Items that represent where you live such as pictures, postcards, maps, newspapers, menus from local restaurants, and other neat things are fun, educational, and connecting!
But don't forget to always send something necessary as well.
Although these kids need to have the chance to have childhoods and teen years, survival is at the top of their list for the moment.
Here are some of the items that they need besides food--which can be paid for with donations, gift cards to stores that are all over such as Sears, J.C. Penney's, etc., and even by finding and packing some of them:
- back packs
- bedrolls/blankets
- socks
- stretch-knit caps to keep their body heat in at night
- soap
- deodorant
- band-aids
- shampoo
- brushes and combs
- casual clothing
- phone cards (for land phones such as pay phones)
Tip: When sending care packages, don't pack too many heavy things together or it might slow down the transit. During a time when I mailed several packages, my heaviest one got separated from the others and arrived a couple of days later. I had sent bubble solution because I'd imagined the kids really enjoying blowing bubbles, as that's a wonderful, carefree thing to do in nice weather. Unfortunately, the wands and the solution didn't arrive together, and the kids had too much of a focus on survival to think ahead to the arrival of the jars of bubble solution, so they left the wands with Russell. I told him that he could donate them to a residential shelter if he wished, but I believe that he's going to keep them and see if the kids will show some interest in the near future.
One thing (heh-heh) I did was to send a "package of interest" to our ten kids with instructions not to show it to Dad until they were ready to involve him with it properly. That might have happened today. I'll probably be hearing about that. I'm saying no more until I know more (heh-heh)...
And, on this note, I'll close this chapter...
Chapter Four
Celebration Week!!!
Celebration Week!!!
