Refugee Hope Box

I’m not sure that I’ve ever posted anything non-Fedora / Linux / tech in this blog since I started it over 10 years ago.
My daughter’s school is running a refugee hope box drive. The boxes are packed full of toiletries and other supplies for refugee children. We will drop our box off at school and it will get shipped to the Operation Refugee Child program, where its contents will be packed into a backpack and delivered to a child in the refugee camps. We decided to pack a box for a teenage girl. It includes everything from personal toiletries, to non-perishable snacks, to some fun things like gel pens, markers, a journal, and Lip Smackers.

We explained to our daughter that there are kids like her who got kicked out of their home by bad guys (“Like the Joker?” she asked. Yep, bad guys like him.) There’s one girl we are going to try to help – since she is far away from home and has almost nothing, we are going to help by sending some supplies for her. My daughter loved the idea and was really into it. We spent most of our Saturday this past weekend getting supplies out and about with the kids, until the kids kind of melted down (nap, shopping cart fatigue, etc.) and we had to head back home.
We were so close to being finished but needed a few more items to finish it up, so I set up an Amazon wishlist for the items remaining and posted it to Twitter. I figured other folks might want to go in on it with us and help, and I could always pick up anything else remaining later this week.
It seriously took 22 minutes to get all of the items left to order purchased. I’m totally floored by everyone’s generosity. Our community is awesome. Thank you.
If you would like to help, you can start your own box or buy an item off of the central organization’s Amazon wishlist.