Thanking the Men and Women Proudly Serving Our Country

We sell a line of military support the troops magnets to raise most of the money for our organization. I feel it is really important for people to see us out working to raise the money that supports our efforts. We go to schools and do a presentation about our organization. We talks about the men and women who proudly serve our country and what that means to each of us. We also talk about community service and the difference it has made in our lives. We will then have kids decorate the packages we are going to pack and make the cards. Sometimes it is a school milk carton turned into a holiday themed basket and other times it might be a decorated Chinese food take-out box. Then the kids pack all kinds of goodies into their decorated boxes. To date we have sent over 48,000 packages to troops deployed overseas. We also travel all around the country and go to air shows at military bases. There we pass out a smaller appreciation bag to the troops working at the air show and personally thank them for their service. It is pretty amazing to see first hand how much even just a simple thank you from an ordinary person means to them! We have personally thanked and passed out over 23,000 bags at air shows in the last 3 years. When I started Hero Hugs at the age of seven, we were sending a few hundred packages each month and now we send 1000-2000 each month. I am hoping that to double what we have sent and reach our 100,000th package by the time I turn 16!