Canadian troops overseas will receive a little piece of home this Christmas.
Grade 7 students at Park Manor Public School in Elmira made handmade Christmas cards to send to the Canadian military in Afghanistan after Abbi Storey was inspired by a newspaper article she read.
“I was working on a letter that I wanted to send to a troop, as something nice to do. And my mom said that she had a friend named Tim Nightingale that would get me an address. And then I thought that maybe I could talk to Ms. McEachern about sending Christmas cards,” Storey explained.
Her mom – a friend of Nightingale’s since high school – encouraged her to pursue the idea and she brought it to her teacher, Sara McEachern. McEachern asked two of the Grade 7 classes if they would be interested and they agreed after hearing Nightingale’s story.
“The class thought that it was a good idea to write Christmas cards to send over just because some people might not have other people at home or haven’t talked to them in awhile,” Storey said.
![Grade 7 student Abbi Storey initiated a project at Elmira’s Park Manor Public School, which saw Grade 7 students craft homemade Christmas cards to send overseas to Canadian troops.[Whitney Neilson / The Observer]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/news_pm_xmascards_post.jpg)
Nightingale served in Afghanistan and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, more commonly known as PTSD, when he returned to Canada. Storey learned about PTSD and how many soldiers don’t want to go out and ask for help. Nightingale did, and has since recovered from his PTSD.
The classes started making the cards last week, getting rough copies done, thinking of notes to write in them, and then making the good copies and adding pictures this week. They’re sending more than 50 cards.
“We didn’t put names on them. We just put ‘this is for you,’ or ‘to you,’ or ‘whoever gets this,’ or something like that. I believe that they will be distributed to different people,” she said.
The cards come with holiday wishes, personal thank yous for their service, and quotes hand-picked by the students.
Storey encourages students at other schools to give back at this time of year and make someone’s day through a random act of kindness.
“If they don’t have someone at home or they can’t go home for the holidays then they would have [the card] as a pick me up, a feel good thing to look at every now and then,” she said.
The activity is a good reminder of the true meaning of Christmas for Storey, and to appreciate the simple things like a roof over our head.
“Take the moment and realize what they’re doing and say ‘thank you.’”
