Quaker In A Basement has taken the lead on this project, collecting donations and buying chocolate and pencils for kids in Iraq:
Here’s the status of our Pencils and Chocolate effort.
Today I bought ten 60-ounce bags of Hershey’s miniatures for $89. That works out to about 38 pounds of chocolate. My office supply wholesaler says he can get us #2 pencils at 44 cents a dozen, or roughly 50 dollars for a case of 120 dozen. Two cases will weigh—that’s right—38 pounds. Coincidence? I think not.
Shipping through military mail will cost us $21 per 19-pound box. So two cases of pencils and all the chocolate, plus shipping, will work out to about $240.
Nobody has set a minimum or maximum for participating in this effort—just do what you can. Please shoot me an email at jomo@indra.com
and let me know how much you can contribute.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/donate-intro-outside
if someone signs up for a paypal donations account for this I bet you’ll get a lot more money
Wow! You guys are simply amazing. Quaker, did you get my reply to your email that I sent? When the PAO gets the stuff and we send it out, I will make sure and have plenty of pictures sent to O Dub, so he can post them and you all can see how much the children appreciate this. You guys are wonderful.
Got it, Smith.
The contributions are rolling in. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me!
I don’t have email addresses for Nimrod, fd, or Hedley. (I’m forgetting somebody else, but who?) If you guys are in on this, will you please contact me?
Either click through my name and send an email to quakerinabasement@hotmail.com, or roll down to the previous thread and find my other address.
And thanks, OW! The new post will keep this effort in front of all our regulars. I think we’ll have it all on the road by sometime next week.
I found Nimrod. And Marty was the other person I couldn’t find an address for.
Get in touch, man!
Quaker- email me with the info please. (Sorry- I’ve been out for a while.) martymortgageatyahoo.com
Update, 12/18:
Donations have passed $500 and are closing in on $600. I went back to Costco for another 38 pounds of little chocolate bars–photos to OW later. In all, 75 pounds of Hershey’s miniatures–I’m guessing about 4,000 pieces. They’re boxed and I’m putting the labels on when I’m finished posting.
I ordered 480 dozen pencils today (that’s 5,760 of ‘em). When they arrive at the wholesaler, I’ll pick them up and cart them straight to the post office.
Thanks, everybody!
Thanks again for all this Quaker.
Everyone–big chip-in from my boss–we’re over $1,000 in total contributions. We’re talking about one seriously big pile o’ pencils.
More news soon.