Chief Wiggles’ Operation Give Blog

UPDATE 02/07/05: Two containers arrived today, were loaded and left our warehouse headed to Sri Lanka.

Evening everyone, it is Friday, February 04, 2005. I thought I would give the Chief a break and write an update for everyone on what is happening and how much progress has been made. If you don’t want to read it all, you can click here for pictures of the warehouse and here for video of the work being done there.(quicktime download here) You get to see a pallet being loaded, wrapped and put into place ready for shipment. An added extra bonus of the guys eating some lunch too!

Let me just say, “WOW!” Everyone has come through far more than we could have imagined! Our warehouse is jammed full of items to be sent to Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re so glad that everyone has been taking advantage of the free shipping donated by FedEx.

Here is a shot of the warehouse.

I’m sure the next question is, “When are these items leaving?”

Quick answer, the first cargo container was supposed to be at our warehouse today. We were there; we had cameras waiting, but no container. Calling the company, we found out there is a dearth of cargo containers. Even with our begging and pleading, we have been delayed until Monday. Come Monday though, our first container to Sri Lanka will arrive at our warehouse, be loaded, and start its very long journey. The next container, Tuesday, then Wednesday, and so forth. Hopefully, the warehouse will go from jam-packed to pleasantly full in no time.

So how big are these containers?

We’ve had some questions about the size of the containers, so I thought I would take a minute and try to explain them. We are using 40’ containers. When the container arrives, we load it with pallets filled with boxes. If we use a paper box, one that holds 10 reams of paper, as a typical sized box, we can get 54 of them on a pallet. We can put 20 pallets in the container and then soft load about 100-200 more boxes. So, each container will hold about 1200 boxes. That’s quite a bit of stuff! That is thousands of kits, blankets, clothing items, school materials, medical supplies and other things.

I also thought I would show you a good example of what is in some of these boxes. Some group sent 55 boxes, for free via FedEx, which arrived today. The boxes were well organized, all about the size mentioned above and each labeled with what was inside and the number of items inside. Things like, 5 Child’s Health Kit Girls, 2 Medical Kits, or School Supplies 10 notebooks, 3 crayon boxes, 50 rulers, etc. Wonderfully organized and packed. Normally, we open all boxes, sort items, repack and label the boxes. With this group, after only opening a few, we were able to just load them onto a pallet. Below are a couple of pictures as examples. If you recognize this as your groups work, send me an email!

I should also take the time here to give a huge shout out to Reverend Sensing. He was the one that gave the suggestions for the kits and the link for other kits. Checking with those we are helping, they were ecstatic with what was being included in the kits and other than a few specific requests for items we were able to provide, they felt the didn’t need to ask for anything else. Donald comes through again!

So here we are, probably 3 containers headed for Sri Lanka, one to Afghanistan and one to Iraq, all this next week. All of this thanks to your generosity, your willingness to help those you have never seen or met, your caring.

Suggestions for Soldiers

As we continue this effort, I thought I would give some suggestions for other things. Of course, you can always look at our list here for items to send to Iraqi/Afghan children, but I thought I would put up a list of things for soldiers as well. People ask us if we ship to the soldiers and the answer is a HUGE YES! This whole thing was started to support the soldiers! So, with that in mind, here are some suggestions, I’m sure the Chief will have more to add. Be warned, some of these items aren’t cheap and many soldiers would be too embarrassed to ask for these items, but be assured they are wanted.

Things the Soldiers Want:

Laptop Computers (They use these to communicate back home, write their own blogs, surf the net and other stuff)
MP3 players
Portable Flash Drives (Many computers are shared and they need something small to store their stuff on, the portable flash drives are perfect for this)
Digital Cameras
Oakley Sunglasses (Want a soldier to be a friend for life? Send him/her a pair of Oakleys)
CDs
DVDs
Portable DVD players
Phone cards (No excuse not to phone home when you have a card)
Send more suggestions to me.

No Nos

Finally, some things NOT to send. Believe me; we’ve received all of these items at least once!

Ripped clothing
Ripped shoes
Stained clothing
Clothing covered in animal hair
Broken toys
Games missing pieces
Puzzles missing pieces
Stained underwear (nasty)
Used toothbrushes (I’m sorry, but this is worse than the stained underwear)
Food past the pull date
Items whose pull date was in the 90s!
Items whose pull date was in the 80s!!!

Big Thanks to all of you!

We do appreciate all of your generosity and 99.99% of you have sent items that are wonderful and useful. There are just a few who I wonder about.

I also hope that you all realize that we do our best to get pictures and the like, but it isn’t easy. The soldiers are doing the distribution, many times in dangerous situations. We are just happy to be able to give them these items for their use and for the use of the Iraqi citizens and while we ask for pictures, if they can’t provide them, we understand fully. If there are any out there that have been disappointed because of the lack of communication or if something wasn’t delivered swiftly we do apologize.

I’ll leave off here. Again, thanks for all the support and I hope you will continue to support us in the future.

Plunge

Some final shots.