Indian Mills Memorial School holds coffee drive for soldiers in Afghanistan
By Katrina Grant
If you are a soldier in Afghanistan, you always need to be alert and prepared. In that spirit, students and faculty at Indian Mills Memorial School recently organized a coffee drive for the troops.
“Mr. Rudman was thinking of something that we could do for the troops,” Amanda Rose, John Rudman’s substitute, said. “The troops don’t get a lot of sleep, war doesn’t sleep. They have to be ready all the time.”
The idea for the coffee run came after Sept. 11. Rudman wanted the lesson of the event to end on a positive note.
“Right after we did the lesson on Sept. 11, Mr. Rudman wanted something we could do to end the lesson on a positive note,” Rose said. “A lot of the kids knew something terrible happened, but a lot didn’t know the extent because they were so young when Sept. 11 happened. We wanted to show them ‘yes, this happened, but there are still troops fighting over there for our safety and us. Once the kids saw the piles of coffee, it just took off.’”
The faculty members made up fliers and distributed them around the school and sent a flier home with each child. They also put an announcement about the coffee drive on the school website and in the school’s email packet. On Friday, Oct.14, the school held the coffee drive.
“The drive went great,” Rose said. “We exceeded our goal of 126 pounds, one pound per student in the seventh grade. (Two weeks ago), we had 200 pounds of coffee, and now we are at 234 pounds and 301 containers of coffee.”
The coffee was to be shipped out Friday, Oct. 21.”
Rose thinks that Rudman will want to continue this drive and other fund raisers like this in the future with the school.
“I leave in a month, but Mr. Rudman wants to do something else this year,” Rose said. “He is already planning something.”
The Indian Mills Memorial School also has a list of people it would like to thank that helped out with the coffee drive:
The Melitta Coffee Company, Cherry Hill Office, which donated five crates of coffee, 62 cans at 11.5 ounces each.
Kerry Auge, who is the point of contact for the Pennsylvania and South Jersey USO, who is helping ship the coffee to Afghanistan.
Capt. Brian M. Downs, point of contact in Afghanistan. They are sending the coffee to his MEDEVAC company.
Kathy and Paul Taylor, who are the owners of Postal Connections in Marlton and donated the boxes to get the coffee to Afghanistan.
Joseph Rosales, an IMMS parent, who got over 25 pounds of coffee donated from employees at the Medford and Atlantic City Starbucks.
The Medford Starbucks employees and store manager, Josh, who encouraged employees to donate coffee.
The Atlantic City Starbucks employees and store manager, Amy, who encouraged employees to donate coffee.
The entire IMMS community for help raising over 300 containers of coffee and tea and still growing and a special thanks to the IMMS secretaries, Karen Zbikowski and Colleen Capocci who got the word out around school community about drive.
