NEW HAVEN –– Paper, stickers, foam, glue, string, ribbon, buttons, markers, pens and pencils covered the table located in the entrance of the 4-H Exhibit Hall at Addison County Fair and Field Days last week. A few kids sat at the table, making greeting cards and neatening up, always on the lookout for people willing to stop by.
This craft setup is part of a community service project the Cornwall 4-H Musketeers are doing throughout the fair. For the second year in a row, the club is running a “Cards for Soldiers” event. Club members make cards with their supplies and encourage passersby to stop and either sign a card or make one of their own. Their goal is to send 2,012 cards to Soldiers’ Angels, an organization that will distrubite the cards to members of the U.S. armed forces stationed abroad.
MaKayla Foster, the club’s president, organized the project. The 14-year-old explained her motivations in running the table for the second year.
“We really just want to encourage all the soldiers overseas,” she said. “It was a takeoff of last year’s project and we made 1,015 cards last year.”
Some of the club members have personal connections to the project because they have relatives in the armed forces. Lizzy Wright, 11, especially appreciates their mission because her dad was in the Army.
“He’s a 40-year veteran and he liked getting cards from my mom and letters and notes from kids,” she said. “So I think this really connects with my mom and him.”
Rachel Foster, 9, thinks her uncle would appreciate their project.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to write to soldiers because you could get it to some soldier that you know, because we have an uncle who’s in the Army and that would be really neat to get a card to send to him,” she said.
The club members carefully made cards, adding stickers or a handprint cut out of foam. Every now and then someone stopped by to happily sign or make a card.
As of midday this past Wednesday, the group already had 1,066 cards ready to go, well above last year’s total.
Jennie Foster, 15, knows that these cards will mean a lot once they are received.
“I think the soldiers would definitely feel encouraged to know that there’s people at home that are thinking of them,” she said.