As you celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, take some time to remember all our soldiers stationed overseas.
If you want to help these men and women far away from home, we’ve collected seven different ways you can share books with our troops. For instance, E-Books for Troops will help you send an eReader to our troops overseas. Army Sgt. Andre Corbin explained at the site:
When soldiers deploy, they have a mandatory packing list of equipment/clothing which must be fitted into a rucksack and a duffel bag – and it takes good packing to get everything required stowed. Any personal items must fit into a backpack, that is basically a carry-on bag – not a lot of room. When you only have about 1.5 cubic feet of space to pack personal items to last a year (or at least until care packages start arriving), you have to be very judicious in what you decide to bring … For me, a voracious reader who is addicted to the written word and regularly devours several novels/books a week, having the room for only a few books – even paperbacks tightly packed – could be a very frustrating dilemma.
7 Ways to Share Books & eBooks with our Troops
1. Books for Soldiers: “Once you are registered, you will be able to view the requests and send troops books, DVDs, games and relief supplies. You will also have access to our Pen Pal area and Post Card Jamboree. On average our volunteers fill thousands of requests a month.”
2. Operation Paperback sends paperbacks to troops overseas, including to the soldiers’ library in in Wardak Province, Afghanistan (pictured above).
3. Books-a-Million will let you select and purchase Books for Troops in a special program.
4. Books for Troops: “founded to send “care packages for the mind” for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq by providing a variety of books that help ease their fears, loneliness, boredom, stress and to allow them a temporary escape from the horrors that they see and live daily. It was also founded to raise awareness of the sacrifices, both big and small, that our troops are making to protect us and to remind them that they are not forgotten.”
5. Follow this Google search to find many more options for sharing books with soldiers.
6. SOS America: Author Shilo Walker: explained: “a number of the volunteers ‘adopt’ units and will collect names, etc. I’ve been sending books out to units for about three years now.”
7. Reader Views Books for Soldiers: “ReaderViews is an official affiliate of Books for Soldiers, you can mail in your books to their Austin Texas office”