For the third year in a row, our team collected extra Halloween candy to donate it to the troops serving overseas. This year, we partnered with Operation Shoebox New Jersey - a Veteran run, grass-roots non-profit organization dedicated to shipping care packages to the troops serving overseas. This year we collected over 2,000 pounds of candy and donated it to this incredible organization. That is A LOT of candy. In order to collect it all, we needed help.

    

We worked with small businesses in the area and asked them to be a drop off location for the candy drive. We sent them a flyer and handled the marketing of the event, if they would agree to allow locals to drop off their extra Halloween candy in their store fronts. Some businesses even got creative to collect as much candy as possible! For example, Parnes & Hill Phamily Orthodontics in Wayne and Paoli offered to "buy back" the candy from their patients that couldn't eat it because of their braces! They paid $1 for every pound, and offered a double donation to a hurricane relief fund. They also agreed to match all of the payouts with a donation to a hur. Special shout out to these businesses for their support and candy donations! Check them out below! 

We would also like to thank the neighborhood Ardmore Park for their gracious donations! The Friday before Halloween a few members of our team walked around the neighborhood and dropped off brown bags on their front porch. These bags had a flyer stapled to the front and a small slip explaining what we were doing and how they could participate. We asked that if the home owners would like to donate candy, they would leave the bag on their front porch the following Friday so we could pick it up. That Friday, a few members of our team again walked the streets and scoped out the bags of candy that the home owners left on their front porches. We filled an entire SUV with candy donations just from this neighborhood alone! 

Outside of our organized candy drop-off locations and neighborhood pick-up's, many individuals and other organizations dropped off candy to our office in Wayne. The contributions were tremendous and we can't thank everyone enough for their support! 





This year we decided to spend the day volunteering at Operation Shoebox and drove the candy donations to the organization. We filled two SUV's to the top with candy!

We arrived at the organization to be greeted by Rod Hirsch, the director of the organization. He explained to us that this non-profit is entirely veteran run and that the organization operates solely on donations, it is a complete non-profit. We asked Rod if the inital tour he gave us of the location was okay to record Live on Facebook and he agreed! Check out the grand tour of Operation Shoebox New Jersey in the video below! 

 

Rod also explained to us that care packages are sent generically, that non-profits like this are unable to obtain specific addresses of the service men and women serving overseas. Because of this, they ask that anyone if anyone knows of a friend or relative that is serving overseas that they send the address to him. The organization is then able to send that individual a care package to their base location. 

If you know of anyone that would like to receive a care package, please complete the following form: 




We will then take these names and addresses and send them to directly to Operation Shoebox, where they agreed to send each person a care package with an assortment of items, letters and even some of your leftover Halloween candy donations!