Each year, students from Mountain Brook’s Brookwood Forest Elementary School takes time during the holiday season to visit the Birmingham VA Medical Center and wrap gifts for veterans.
The third annual Wrapping for America’s Warriors project grew this year to include participation from students at Cherokee Bend Elementary as well.
According to a release, the holiday wrapping project serves to help students understand the importance of rendering service and giving back to those who have given their all to keep us safe.
The gifts have been donated from outside agencies in past years and wrapped by students at the VA Clinic.
This year, the sixth-grade students at BWF and CBES hosted a donation drive, and asked students to bring in toboggans, scarves, gloves and cloth masks. With teacher guidance, the fifth-grade students from both schools gift wrapped the items using a specific theme decided on and purchased by them.
Both schools wrapped enough items to provide every inpatient at the Birmingham VA Medical Center a present for the holidays. A surplus of wrapped gifts will be delivered to veterans in several transition homes.
Founders of the project are Chief of Voluntary Service at Birmingham VA Charmel Taylor and her sister Carla Dudley, assistant principal at Cherokee Bend Elementary.
“We believe it is important for students to serve our Veterans… our nation’s real heroes… the ones who freely served our country in order for us to experience the freedoms that come along with being an American,” said Dudley.
Both say this project is special to them because it allows their work paths to cross, but more importantly it provides an opportunity for children to connect with Veterans outside of Veterans Day.
