Wednesday, December 21, 2011

A CHALLENGERS CHRISTMAS


The Challengers outside of Fuel. Photo by Lacy Landre- Third Coast Digest.

The Challengers volunteered for a couple of holiday missions over the last few weeks. Their annual toy drive took place again this year outside of the Fuel Cafe here in Milwaukee (right in my neighborhood, Riverwest)where they took donations of toys and art supplies to be divvied up between two charities, the Gingerbread House and the Meta House.

The Gingerbread House is in nearby Washington County and provides toys to low income families who can't afford to buy gifts.

The Meta House is right down the street from me in Riverwest and is a rehab program for women and their families. They are always in need of art supplies for their art therapy programs.

Challengers The Watchman, Crimson Crusader, Night Vision, and Blackbird as well as Watchman heirs apparent Wonder Boy and Guardian Girl were on hand to collect donations. Things were slower this year compared to last year. We were not able to get the media placement like we did last season and--I don't know--times are hard.

Still, we did get some donations and these were delivered to Gingerbread House by The Watchman and to the Meta House by Blackbird and myself.
Photobucket
The Challengers helping out the Veterans for Peace. Photo by Gary Porter, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Something interesting that came out of the event was meeting a man named Terry who works with a group called Veterans for Peace. He was very interested in what the guys were doing and invited them to an event Monday night.

The event, at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, was a sort of unloading party. Fifty volunteers, including firefighters, veterans, and others unloaded and stacked a donation of 350 cases of food for the Veterans for Peace Food Pantry. Blackbird, Crimson Crusader, and Night Vision joined the human assembly line to help stock the food. The 484th Army Band played Christmas carols as the volunteers worked. The RLSH had a good reception and already are talking with Terry about more ways they can work with Veterans for Peace.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS
No matter what you celebrate (even if it is the maniacal Real Life Supervillain holiday Ubermas) I wish you all a happy holiday season. I will have a short holiday hiatus myself, but expect a new blog post the first week of January.

LINKS

GINGERBREAD HOUSE: www.volunteernow.net/vc_no_menu_gingerbread.shtml
META HOUSE: www.metahouse.org
VETERANS FOR PEACE: www.milwaukeevfp.org

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