To Whom it may concern:

I would like to ask the communities in this area to help us with something that is very important to us.  We have established a collection system to acquire much needed articles for the military personnel fighting terrorism overseas.  We have been doing this for the last few years and have had great success in a limited capacity.  We would like to expand this program to include more businesses and people to make this a more productive endeavor.

We are calling the program CIVILIANS HELPING OVERSEAS MILITARY PERSONNEL OR C.H.O.M.P.  As soon as possible we are going to go out into the community and ask different businesses and people to let us use their location to put up a container and/or money receptacle to give the public easier access to drop off items that are needed for this project.  We will put up a list of drop-off locations and items needed  on our web site www.chompforvets.org and update it as needed.  We hope the public will respond in a generous manner.

This project has two agendas:

1.  To be able to involve the community as a whole to support our troops fighting terrorism.

2.  To find our local men and women serving overseas and supply them with much needed personal items that they cannot easily acquire in the areas in which they are serving.

This second agenda is a tricky one.  We need families who have their sons and daughters who are stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan to let us send help packages to them by giving their overseas addresses.  This is something the military cannot give us freely for security reasons.  We are looking for military personnel from the local area, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Marshall, Coldwater, Bellevue, etc. so that we know it will benefit our local soldiers.

If you would like to contact us, please us our contact page.