Just in time for Thanksgiving, care packages assembled on Veterans Day by students in Academy360 Upper School are on their way to active duty members of the military.

A360 Upper School teacher Laura Conti is a West Point mom and a member of the 300 Boodle Brigade, a group of over seven thousand military mothers. Established in 2012, the organization puts together care packages for military personnel. The organization gets the name “boodle” from the military slang for a care package and “300” from their initial goal of sending 300 care packages. In the ten years since those 300 packages, the organization has sent over 20,000 boxes to military members.

The students were involved in every stage of the project. The journey started with a CBI trip to Big Lots, where students shopped for items to include in the baskets. The students then sorted the items so that every box contained a mix of heath items, games and puzzles, and other items. The students also wrote poems and thank you cards to include in the packages. Finally, on Veterans Day the students helped assemble the packages which are en route to the soldiers along with the thanks of the students and staff who prepared them.