Charity Clothing in Madrid

Friday, May 16, 2008

After burring the living room in bags of clothing for charity I used the Salvation Army contact so graciously provided by my friend Sangria. The morning after I had sent them an email, they sent me the following reply.

We have in Madrid three Community Centers which are receiving and distributing clothing.

In our Center in Valdemoro there is also a Thrift Store.

We really do not have here in Madrid a collect system. Usually people bring their own clothing to our Centers. If you have a big amount of clothing, we can arrange so that one of our official vehicles can make a collection.

As well as in the States, the money raised is used for the maintenance of our social services and development our charity projects.

Here you can find the contact info for the Centers mentioned:

MADRID CENTRAL CORPS & COMMUNITY CENTER
c/ Hermosilla, 126. Lc. 4
28028 MADRID
Phone: 913566644
Contact person: Major Shane Gruer-Caulfield

PALOMERAS CORPS & COMMUNITY CENTER
Av. Rafael Alberti, 18Bis
28018 MADRID
Phone: 91 7781784
Contact person: Major Belinda Arias

VALDEMORO CORPS & COMMUNITY CENTER
c/ Bret�n de los Herreros, 10.
28340 VALDEMORO (MADRID)
Phone: 91 2481646
Contact person: Captain Luis Romera

Please feel free to contact our colleagues to organize the deliver or collection of your clothing.

I trust you will find this information helpful.

May God bless you.

Sincerely,

Carmen Alvea
Administrative Secretary
The Salvation Army - Spain Command

I also did some looking around my local area and found a local mall has bins for clothing collection. My boyfriends mother also mentioned that there was a church by her house that had bins. Seeing the Salvation Army is quite a distance from us, and I don't feel I have enough for a pick up, I will do small deliveries to the mall and drop off at the church.

Nether one of the two locations is close, but they are in enough distance to reach with small loads. In this day and age of hard times, I just don't have the heart to waist perfectly good clothing. I know there are plenty of people who can really benefit from a little bit of my effort, so I will make trips every time I can. I think in a week or so I can unload it all with out going directly out of my way to do it.

Now the real challenge is not spending money when I pass threw the mall so many times!

Why We Support Troops

Friday, May 9, 2008

As every one knows the war in the middle east has been ongoing for many years now . I have heard hundreds of stories on why we are there, and hundreds of views on if we should be fighting at all.

Right now the one thing I know is true, and I feel is the most important aspect of this war, is to support the troops who are out there. Now many people don't understand why they should support troops if they don't support the war. I can see how some one not educated in military life can feel that way.

Let me explain it simply, the men and woman fighting right now are there because they wanted to defend their Country. In that military contract they sign over their lives to the judgment of the US government, and to the people who establish it. The government then sends them out to fight anything they deem necessary. If the individual solder or unit of military do not do the assigned duty, they are imprisoned.

Some people feel that prison is better then fighting a war, but when your trained and believe that you are responsible for the life next to you, you learn to think different. Every solder out there knows that if he abandons his friends, they are more likely to get killed. They know every man who doesn't fight, makes another man fight for him. No government on earth will ever say, Oh well we ran out of solders lets end the war. They would rather draft and force people against their will to fight and die on foreign land.

It is for this reason, that every American owes nothing less then support for the troops. If you don't know what you can do to help, here are several links to charity and collections for the solders in the Middle East.

Please note, these charities do NOT FUND the MILITARY and DO NOT FUND the WAR. They are strictly supporting the health and spirit of the individual troops.

• Email the troops - http://www.emailourmilitary.com/index.html
• Soup for the troops - http://www.ed-foods.com/military.html
• Phone Cards for the troops - http://www.operationuplink.org/
• Give a troop a MistyMate (personal cooler) - https://www.mistymate.com/
• A list of Charities for troops and veterans - http://www.charitynavigator.org
• Care Pack Drives: http://www.opgratitude.com/
• Silly String Collection Drives - http://www.veteranstoday.com

If you don't know, silly string has proven effective in detecting trip wires. It can spray a good distance and is light. It will outline a trip wire with out setting it off and this saves lives!

Kill time for charity!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

I came across this great little game today called freerice. It's basically a vocabulary trivia game, but the twist is that for every question you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice to charity.

Just think about it, your sitting at your desk playing a trivia game and when you get caught you actually have a legitment excuse!

It's a nice program, it's free, and it's for a good cause. Stop in and play when ever you have a few moments to spare, no sign up required.

http://www.freerice.com/