Operation Baking GALS

As challenging as life has been these past few years, I've continued to seek ways that I can feel rewarded.  I truly believe in the good karma that comes from volunteers and giving of oneself in time, service or goods and money.  Since Dave and I have had to be careful with our budget during his unemployment, the checks once written to the causes we believe in have gotten smaller.  But my willingness to help has probably gotten bigger.

One of the reasons I started crocheting was so that I could give my friends and family beautiful homemade gifts, but also so that I could create items to donate to people in need.  So I've made  Comfort Scarves for women in domestic violence shelters and chemo caps for cancer patients at area hospitals.  We began fostering dogs for All Dog Rescue partly because of our desire to have a dog in our lives, but also to help save a dog and give it a good life while finding it's forever home.  We have the love, time and home to give so it made sense to get involved. 

About once a year my department at work has an opportunity to do a volunteer project.  We are given the opportunity to leave our desks for the morning and join a group of our coworkers to help out an area agency (as a group) for a few hours. Then we come back, have lunch and return to our desks for the afternoon, feeling fulfilled, at least in my part, because spending the morning sorting food at the Greater Boston Food Bank or organizing donated children's clothing at Cradles to Crayons puts everything in perspective and inspires me to be a better person and help those around me.

Even my baking has become a source of goodwill.  A couple weeks ago I was looking for recipes from a fellow blogger, Beantown Baker, and found a link to an organization called Operation Baking GALS (Give A Little Support).  The group is an all volunteer, web-organized effort that succeeds in getting groups of people to rally and bake homemade treats for service members.  The idea is that service members are nominated and each month maybe 5-10 teams are created to bake for one of the nominated individuals.  Team members bake up treats and ship them to their service member, who over about a week's time ends up with as many as a dozen or more packages full of goodies and other items from home.  The idea is to give these heroes a reminder of home and let them know they are supported, even if it's from a complete stranger.  I instantly loved the concept and had to join.

So this weekend I'll be baking for Denny, a first lieutenant in the Marines stationed in Afghanistan.  Denny grew up in Altoona, PA, not far from where I went to college and only a couple of hours from Pittsburgh.  When looking through the 10 nominated service members, I could have baked for any of them, but the almost-hometown connection sealed the deal.  I'll plan to make something yummy and add some extra store-bought comforts lacking in Afghanistan (apparently Denny is a fan of Cheez-its and Pringles).

It's so easy to be kind to people and help others.  Sort of amazing that in a time of financial crisis globally and a tight budget at home, I've found more ways to help people that I probably ever have before.  I plan on saving all these karma points for something big.