Help in supporting Troops?

[LitLover84]

Let me start off by saying I'm new to this site so I'm not sure that this is the correct place for this post, but I thought I would post it here so as to possibly get the most views. I apologize if this isn't the appropriate venue.

I'm 26 and a single mother and I'm currently a full time college student working on finishing my Bachelor's degree. I'm part of the Lit Club at school and a few of the other members besides myself are interested in ways to support the troops.

I've sent care packages and letters of support recently to contacts I found through anymarine.com, but the required donation to the site in order to receive a contact's mailing address is something that both me and my friends would like to avoid if at all possible. We'd rather put all of the funds we raise toward purchasing things for care packages, shipping, etc.

As we are all attending college, money is not in great supply so we'd like to support servicemen and servicewomen deployed or stationed overseas as pen pals, too. I've looked online some for ways to find pen pals, but the supposed pen pal sites I've found have been dating/meat market sites in reality. We're all single young women (I'm the oldest), but we're not doing this for romantic reasons. We just want to help serve those who are serving us.

This is where your advice and help would be appreciated. Any ideas on how/where to find pen pal contacts that we can send letters and possibly an occasional care package to? We just want to help how and where we can. The men and women of our armed forces, especially the ones deployed or stationed overseas, sacrifice so much in order to assure that we here back home can enjoy the safety that we do. We just want to offer support, say thanks, and maybe make a friend or two in the process.

Suggestions, advice, etc. are most welcome! Thank you!

[josephd]

The USO would be a great place to start. I also know that every state has a blue star mothers program/group that does stuff like this.

[LitLover84]

Thanks! I'll look into those.

[USNAviator]

Ask friends and family (http://www.ehow.com/relationships-and-family/) if they know someone deployed in Iraq. Someone you know probably does. Ask if they would mind having a pen pal.

Contact local organizations involved in supporting troops with care packages and messages. Your local grocery store, VFW, American Legion or AmVets are good places to contact. They may have an address of a platoon or individual that you could connect with.

Ask on message boards whether someone knows a soldier who needs a pen pal. Similarly, you can seek out message boards and forums where service members seeking pen pals post, like Military Pen Pals.

Register at with interest-based group like ChristiaNet. They provide pen pal connections for Christian deployed military service members
Try a website that matches individual civilians with individual service members, like Email Our Military (eMOM). Groups like these are the way around the ban on writing to "Any Service Member." They require a registration where you provide information about yourself, for safety (http://www.ehow.com/how_4531938_adopt-marine-penpal.html#) reasons.

[LitLover84]

Thanks. Will do

[LitLover84]

Or if anyone on here knows of a marine who would like to get some mail, you can message me. There will be four of us for sure who will be writing letters, but we may have a few more join us. We're fine with email or snail mail.

[Sgt Leprechaun]

Well done.

Stop in to our 'Ask a Marine' section in the poolee forums and check out our site rules, also.

If anyone gives you any issues, do NOT hesitate to let me know.