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Stateside vs. Deployed Ugly Sweater Contest
If this doesn't put you in the holiday spirit, we don't know what will!
Several weeks ago, a deployed Chaplain reached out to the Soldiers' Angels Chaplain Support Team with a special request: Ugly Christmas Sweaters. He was planning a holiday party for the service members he supported and hoped that something fun & silly might bring a smile to their faces.
The Angels on the Chaplain Support Team didn't think twice about getting sweaters downrange in time for their holiday party on December 16th. And once those sweaters started arriving to the Chaplain, we decided to take this unique opportunity one step further: a contest from opposite sides of the world— Stateside vs. Deployed!
It's an annual tradition at Soldiers' Angels for there to be a staff Ugly Sweater contest where our Facebook followers vote for their favorite. But this year we took that contest and turned it into a head-to-head!
Be sure to stop by our Facebook page now through Monday, December 19th and vote for your favorite sweaters! If you're not on Facebook, visit our Flickr album to view the contestants. (You won't be able to vote on Flickr, but you can check out the contest!)
Here's just a few of our favorite photos from downrange!
Coffee is Back!!
Thanks to the fall Books-A-Million Coffee for the Troops campaign, we have thousands of bags of delicious Joe Muggs coffee waiting to be shipped to deployed service members around the world and veterans in VA Hospitals across the country. But without your help, we cannot send a taste of home to our heroes.
- $25 will provide 496 cups of coffee
- $50 will provide 992 cups of coffee
- $100 will provide 1,984 cups of coffee
- $200 will provide 3,968 cups of coffee
- $400 will provide 7,936 cups of coffee
The Impact of Support: Soldiers' Angels Adopt-A-Family
The Soldiers' Angels annual Holiday Adopt-A-Family program is in full swing. Volunteers around the country have stepped up to "adopt" thousands of eligible military or veteran families to help ensure their children have a wonderful holiday celebration. Here's just one of those stories and the heartwarming impact this Angel had on a veteran and her five children.
Don't Miss the Advent Calendar!
The final days of the 2022 Digital Advent Calendar are here! Don't miss your chance to be inspired by all that you helped to accomplish in 2022.
San Antonio Food Distribution Serves 500
Every month, the Soldiers' Angels Veteran Food Distributions provide food assistance to 200 veterans in six cities across the country. But this month, thanks to a recent $50,000 grant from Boeing, the San Antonio distribution was able to increase that number from 200 to 500 veterans! We were also able to open up the registration to local active duty, guard, and reserve members.
The event, which came just in time for the holidays, provided groceries, a holiday turkey and fixings, a stuffed holiday stocking, candy, nuts, popcorn, coffee and more! It even included special appearances from Santa and the Grinch, who had a really great time dancing to the holiday music.
Click the button below to watch the news segment about this massive food event.
In The Headlines
NATIONAL NONPROFIT SOLDIERS’ ANGELS GIVES BACK TO CHARLESTON COMMUNITY
A Texas-Sized Baby Shower for Military Moms
USAA really knows how to shower Military Moms with love and appreciation! We experienced it firsthand this past month during their Operation: Baby Shower event at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The event brought together Military moms, Texans Cheerleaders, Lady Texans, and TORO, honoring 20 military moms in total.
Spreading the Cheer Nationwide
United Rentals has been supporting Soldiers' Angels Holiday Stockings for Heroes campaign for the past four years. Each year they have committed to a larger pledge involving more employees and more regions. This year, they decided to take their campaign company-wide to include all U.S. regions! Read to learn how their stocking pledge grew from 300 their first year to 3,000 this year!
Email Outage
On Friday, December 2, 2022, Rackspace, the technology company hosting the Soldiers’ Angels email accounts, experienced a security breach affecting their hosting environment. Due to the breach, Rackspace disabled access to all email accounts. This included the Soldiers’ Angels email accounts. We have since restored access to our email by migrating to another service— however, if you emailed Soldiers' Angels between December 2 and December 5 and have not heard back, please reach out again! We are still not able to access email from that period of time! If you sent an email outside of that date range and haven't heard back, please forward that email to us. This will help us determine if we missed any other emails during the migration!
Santa Sightings at Soldiers' Angels Events Across the Country!
We feel so incredibly honored to be on Santa's VIP list here at Soldiers' Angels! We know how busy he is during this time of the year and how difficult it must be to make an appearance at so many places before the big night. But somehow, this year, Santa made it a priority to stop by several Soldiers' Angels events across the country! Here's the ones we know about... so far...
Thursday, December 15: Santa visited the historically large San Antonio Veteran Food Distribution... wait... is that TWO Santa's??
Thursday, December 15: The size of this month's San Antonio Food Distribution wasn't the only thing making history... we also had a visit from the Grinch and caught him being nice!!!
Friday, December 15: After a very busy day in San Antonio, Santa made his way to the Cincinatti VA to help Soldiers' Angels volunteers hand out blankets from this year's Blanket Drive to veteran patients!
Friday, December 16: Santa and the Grinch were sighted together at the Orlando Veteran Food Distribution! We're pretty sure those two are secretly good friends!
Will Santa (or the Grinch) be sighted at any other Soldiers' Angels events?? We'll have to wait and see!
988 then Press 1
If you, a service member, or a Veteran you know is in crisis, call the Veterans Crisis Line’s new number now: Dial 988 then Press 1.
Love what we do at Soldiers' Angels? Tell the world! Share your experience on our Great Nonprofits page to help others learn about the important work that we do.
Is your birthday coming up? Why not support troops and veterans on your special day by donating your birthday to Soldiers' Angels on Facebook?
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Thank you for your continued support of the military community!
