Taunton Students Help Send Treats to the Troops

This year marks the return of the student council to School. As part of their return to the community, the fourth and fifth graders took on an ambitious project to help people halfway across the world. 

Cari Kennedy and Coreen Goralski said the project, which sent candy to troops overseas with the help of Operation Shoebox New Jersey, proved that they had the skills needed to be on the council. "Once we decided we were going to do this, as advisors we wanted to make sure that the children who decided to join had some sort of leadership role," said Kennedy. 

According to Operation Shoebox's website, it was founded in 2005 and has already sent more than 46,000 packages to troops overseas in that time. In addition to candy they also send other items overseas including lip balm, sun block and toiletries to bring the soldiers a little piece of home.

At their first student council meeting, Kennedy, a fifth grade special education teacher, and Goralski, a third grade special education teacher, said the students discussed various projects that could help the school and the community.

After some discussion, Kennedy said their direction became clear. "They had a sudden and definitive interest in ways they wanted to support our troops," she said. Supporting our soldiers is nothing new to the Taunton population as they hold one of the largest Veterans Day celebrations in the district.  

When they started thinking about ways to help the troops, Kennedy said several factors were considered. "When we started talking about how the economy has sort of taken a hit and not everybody is able to make a monetary donation, what were some things we could give up and what are some things coming in."

The planning was taking place right around Halloween so Kennedy said the students decided that doing something positive with their candy would be a good way to go. "Having never done the candy drive we didn't expect this wonderful response from the community," Kennedy said. "Everybody just kept bringing in bushels and bushels of candy."

Goralski said they got such an impressive turnout that even after the deadline to collect the candy had passed they kept getting more donations. It was not just the students that helped either according to Kennedy. "Our staff had been completely supportive since they were bringing in their extras," she said. "They blew us away with their generosity."

By the time their work was done, the students had collected 10 full boxes of sweets to send to the troops. "They have relatives that are deployed and are away overseas so they know they could be benefitting from this," Goralski said. "They didn't get to trick or treat. They didn't get to be with their children or their families so why not give them a little bit of a taste of what they're missing." 

One of the things that Kennedy said attracted her to Operation Shoebox is the fact that the organization can send their packages directly to family members of people who donate items. "We can list all of the military active members not just in Taunton but also other members of Howell," she said. 

She added that she hoped this would be the first of many times her students got to work with the group. "There's definitely opportunities for us to do more service with this organization for the winter holidays so I'm going to propose that, but it's ultimately up to the kids if that's what they want to do or not."

Kennedy said the students in her class are staying active by sending the greeting cards that can be made on the website to send overseas.

More information on how to help Operation Shoebox can be found on the organization's Facebook page.