BY TARA PETERSEN
Staff Writer
PHOTOSBYJEFF GRANIT staff Girl Scout Troop 1859 co-leader Heather Wade (l) and Cassie Botnick, 12, of Allentown, get ready to have boxes of Girl Scout cookies weighed at the Allentown post office so they can be sent to soldiers in Iraq. ALLENTOWN — Buy a box of Girl Scout cookies for yourself, but how about another one for someone who serves your country?
When Girl Scout Troop 1859 went door to door this year selling Girl Scout cookies, troop members asked friends, relatives and neighbors to donate to the Red Horse Platoon 823, which is stationed in Iraq.
Girl Scouts Kelly Agabiti, 13, and Jannah Bahgat, 12, prepare boxes of Girl Scout cookies to be sent overseas. “People were very responsive to it,” said Heather Wade, a co-leader of the troop. “We live in a great neighborhood. We’re a close-knit group.”
Wade’s daughter, Cassie, sold more cookies for soldiers in Iraq than she did for people at home.
Though just six members strong, the Scouts managed last week to ship 216 boxes of various cookies overseas.
They also enclosed letters with each package, declaring themselves new pen pals and thanking the soldiers “for working so hard to protect and defend everything we cherish here at home.”
“We thought it would be a great service project for the girls and [would] help boost the morale of the soldiers,” Wade said. “Nothing says America like Girl Scout cookies — a little piece of home.”
But the girls didn’t stop with the all American treats.
The troop has also committed to adopting the platoon through the Adopt-A-Platoon (AAP) Web site, adoptaplatoon.org.
According to the site, AAP is a nonprofit organization managed nationwide by volunteer mothers that provides connections — primarily through moral support, correspondence and care packages — between American volunteers around the country and men and women in the military who are serving abroad.
“Our mission,” the site states, “is to ensure that no U.S. deployed soldier is forgotten, rally the nation behind our troops and teach patriotism.”
AAP allows an individual, organization or corporation to adopt a single soldier or an entire platoon, or to just become a pen pal to someone overseas.
Adoption involves a commitment to send “a weekly cheerful card or letter and a minimum monthly care package,” the site states.
Wade said the Scouts will send one care package per month with items such as snacks, toiletries, DVDs, lip balm and sunscreen.
They are hoping to hear back soon from the platoon to see what else it would like to have.
The girls have no connection to the platoon or to anyone overseas, according to Wade.
“We just decided to do it,” she said.