LYNNFIELD — Students in the Interact Club are collaborating with Operation Troop Support to collect donations for active-duty soldiers.
The club is seeking comfort items in the form of socks, writing materials, playing cards, and kind words.
“Our veterans really appreciate any gesture you can make,” said Interact Club representative Peggy Pratt Calle.
Lynnfield Interact Club is an active program at Lynnfield Middle School and Lynnfield High School. The club operates in partnership with the Lynnfield Rotary Club to bring youth ages 12- 18 together, helping them develop leadership skills as well as opening doors and creating opportunities through community service.
The Interact Club organizes at least two projects every year that will help either its school or the greater community ― sometimes both. The town’s Rotary Club in turn sponsors, mentors, and guides Interactors as they carry out projects and develop leadership skills. According to Rotary International, there are 14,911 Interact clubs in 145 countries with 342,954 participants.
In Lynnfield, 15 students are involved with the club, which was organized in 2010. The club’s leadership team includes President Sophia Calle, Vice President Isabella George, Secretary Abigail Travers, and Treasurer Harrison Grasso.
Calle, Sophia’s mother, said that two years ago, the future of the club was in limbo after the last active members of the club graduated.
“Four people started up the club again and now we are happy to have 15 students involved,” she said.
Operation Troop Support has sent thousands of care packages to troops around the world over the past 17 years. Established in 2003, Operation Troop Support is a Danvers-based nonprofit organization that serves deployed men and women in uniform from across the country. The organization has five missions: sending care packages to troops, supplying military hospitals in the United States and abroad with much-needed comfort items, coordinating a holiday gift-wrapping program for the benefit of the military, coordinating a regional family-support program for members of the military and generating public awareness of the sacrifices and needs of soldiers and their families.
Operation Troop Support is currently working on an initiative it calls the Soldier Donation Items of the Month, a campaign in which it asks for donations of specific items, which are collected and sent to troops that are deployed overseas.
“Operation Troop Support sends out a very special ‘thank you’ to those people who have come forward over the past 10 years to show the troops and their families how much America cares,” said Operation Troop Support in a statement.
Donations can be brought to a designated drop-off bin at the front desk of Lynnfield High School or at 16 Pleasant St., Revere, at the Century 21 office’s back door. The deadline for donations is Oct. 28.
The Interact Club will continue working with Operation Troop Support on their Soldier Donation Item of the Month initiative. Check the Interact Club’s facebook page for more information.
Hannah Chadwick can be reached at [email protected].
