What do real estate agents and gardeners
have in common?
In Crofton, Maryland, the agents and staff at Long & Foster Real Estate and the members of Crofton Village Garden Club come together to build holiday gift bags for deployed troops. We call this joint effort Operation Christmas.
It all began when I read about Operation Give, a non-profit organization that sends overseas everything from Christmas stockings for the troops to soccer balls for kids. Thanks to the generosity of FedEx, donors could send items to Operation Give without any shipping cost and that organization, in turn, would distribute donated items around the world.
The first carton of holiday gift bags was done in 2006 with help from agents in my small RE/MAX office. When I switched to Long & Foster two years later, agents and staff at the larger office enthusiastically embraced my project and we sent five cartons (100 gift bags) to Operation Give. Then I mentioned Operation Christmas at a garden club meeting and members started dropping off bags of goodies at my front door and handing me checks... enough to send double the number of gift bags the following year. (However, that was such a storage and logistical nightmare that now we're back to 100 per year with any extra donated items or money sent directly to Operation Give.)
Operation Christmas, Crofton, MD
After ten years of doing this project, it runs like a smooth military operation, with gift items and financial donations coming from both organizations, Long & Foster providing the facilities for storing and assembling everything, and garden club members filling the bags. No two bags are exactly alike, although each has something from each of the following categories:
- Socks
- Candy (bags of individually wrapped assorted candies or bubble gum)
- Healthy Snacks (Nature Valley Granola bars or nuts or fruit snacks)
- Toiletries (We fill small cellophane bags with 2-packs of aspirin, lip balm, safety pins, band-aid packs, and a travel-size of either mouth wash or hand sanitizer or Gold Bond powder)
- Tissues and/or wipes
- Puzzle books with mechanical pencils taped to the back
- Unique gifts (paperback books donated by Crofton Library or flashlight or manicure kit or reading light)
- Toys or gag gifts (beach ball or deck of cards or puzzle or magic trick or whoopi cushion or harmonica)
- Hand-signed greeting cards from Long & Foster and the Crofton Village Garden Club
Operation Christmas, Crofton, MD
A few of us count and sort everything in advance, and our assembly line operation around a large conference table takes only about an hour. The contents of each bag are secured with a layer of folded tissue paper and jingle bells hang from ribbon which ties together the handles.
FedEx no longer covers the shipping cost to send our holiday gift bags to Operation Give, so we'll have to pay for that ourselves this year. I sure hope that FedEx reconsiders in the future because their generosity is the primary reason I was able to get this project off the ground ten years ago and sustain it for a decade. We love doing Operation Christmas for our troops, and we love hearing from a few recipients each year.
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