Holiday card donations become "green" greetings

  • Published
  • By Maj. Alysia Harvey
  • 960th Cyberspace Operations Group Public Affairs
Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. --  A Citizen Airman helped a community organization for children raise money to support their programs and services for abused, neglected and homeless children, young adults and families by recycling greeting cards.

Senior Airman Monique Harps, a directory service technician assigned to the 860th Network Operations Squadron, spearheaded the effort, collecting nearly 300 cards for St. Jude's Ranch for Children's Recycled Card Program during the January unit training assembly.

"St. Jude's Ranch will recycle our greeting cards and create new holiday and all-occasion greeting cards," said Harps, a native of Wichita Falls, Texas. "I specifically like this outreach effort because it keeps the cards out of the land field, raises money to provide services to kids in need and brings a smile to someone's face when they receive one of the recycled cards."

According to the St. Jude's Ranch for Children website, the Recycled Card Program enables children at the Ranch to participate in making the new "green" cards by removing the front and attaching a new back, resulting in a beautiful new card. It goes on to explain that the program teaches the children entrepreneurship skills and is beneficial to everyone, in that customers receive fun, "green" holiday or other occasion cards they can feel good sending to their friends and loved ones, and the children at the hospital receive payment for their work, and learn basic job skills and the importance of recycling.

"I found out about this program during the 2007/2008 holiday season while working in procurement at American Airlines," Harp said. "We had received hundreds of greeting cards that would eventually find their way to the trash. Not wanting to be wasteful, a colleague and I went to the Internet to see how we could recycle the cards."
During the December UTA, Harp asked members of her squadron to save unwanted greeting cards and bring them in for the January UTA so that they could be donated to the Recycled Card Program.

"We collected 286 cards; 196 were sent to St. Jude's, and the remaining 90 were not sent due to copy write (Hallmark, American Greeting and Disney) limitations," Harp explained. "This is a simple way to give back, everyone has to opportunity to participate since members aren't expected buy anything or step away from their work, and logistically, it is one of the easiest outreach efforts to organize."

According to her supervisor, Harps is a pleasure to work with and supervise.

"Her work with St. Jude's greeting card fundraiser is one example of the many initiatives that highlight her dedication, professionalism, and leadership traits," said Staff Sgt. Luis Gomez Gonzalez, 860th NOS. "She recently shared a quote that resonated with me, and that I believe perfectly captures her outlook and attitude: 'A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.'"

And indeed Harp is looking ahead and says she will continue organizing this outreach for her unit every January. Since both new and used cards are accepted year round and any individual or group can participate in the program, she encourages others to visit the St. Jude's Ranch website to learn more and to consider donating cards in the future.