Welcome to the L.A. Karma Project

THE LA KARMA PROJECT BLOG IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION. CHECK BACK SOON FOR OUR NEW LOOK! Welcome, Willkommen, Bruchim Ha'Baim, Aloha, Benvenuto, Marhaban, and Bienvenido. We have decided to go out and put some of our free time to good use by volunteering around the L.A. area. We will be writing about our experiences on this website. We hope bring awareness to some of these amazing opportunities and hopefully get more people involved in volunteering and serving others. We have also created a Facebook group, L.A. Karma Project, which we encourage you to join. We will be posting events to get groups together and help out at some of the various organizations. If you have any suggestions of places to volunteer at, be sure to let us know. Also, if you have been to any of the places we have already written about, please leave a comment to let others know about your opinion. Thanks for checking out the site!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Operation Gratitude



Grading:

Ease of Sign up (5 being easiest)
5/5 (Zach) 5/5 (Justin)
Physicality (0 being no physical labor)
3/5 (Zach) 2/5 (Justin)
Fun Factor: 3/5

Info:
Address: 17330 Victory Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91406
Phone: No P
hone Available
Hours: Monday & Friday: 9AM - 4PM
Tuesday - Thursday: 12PM - 4PM
Saturday & Sunday 9AM - 4PM
http://www.opgratitude.com/

Time Spent:
9AM - 1:00PM
February 13th, 2009

Cut The Crap:
Operation Gratitude is a great organization that works out of the Van Nuys National Guard Armory and sends out care packages to troops in conflict zones overseas. The organization has already sent out 320,000 they all include nice little gifts along with personal letters from caring people. There are many ways one can help out. You can help put the packages together, assist with labeling or by writing letters. There is no sign up process or lengthy set of paperwork to fill out before you can start helping. For more info on how you can get involved visit Operation Gratitude.

Operation Gratitude – Zach's Experience
When I arrived, Justin and I met up with the director of volunteering named Charlie. He was very friendly and told us real simple instructions. Take out these five hour energy drinks from the care packages and then separate all the contents. So pretty much they already had these packages put together but they were completely ruined by these stupid energy drinks. We are talking tens of thousands. Turns out they burst in transit and got all over many of the other contents of the care packages. They would soon become the bane of my existence. First of all, why are we giving this type of crap to our soldiers overseas? It is like poison. It is bad for you and gets you all tweaked out. Is this what we want to give our guys out on patrol. These were really tiny bottles… but somehow they managed to squeeze in enough warning information you would think they inscribed the Aeneid on the side. Oh well, all I can say is, I am glad that we were taking that garbage out of their care packages.

Justin and I were examples of efficiency. We hauled ass and separated things faster then anyone had ever done in the place. Then after a couple hours rolled in “Mr. American Flag Suspenders Guy.” Operation Gratitude…More like Operation Attitude. To tell you the truth I didn’t even mind working with the guy who was doing community service for the hate crime he committed…but “Mr. American Flag Suspenders Guy,” to be henceforth known as, MAFSG was terrible. Instead of being friendly and introducing himself to us, like everyone else had done, he came over and immediately told us we were doing everything the wrong way. However, he never told us his correct way of doing things. Everyone else was telling us what a good job we were doing. I hate saying anything bad about a community service organization but I can’t let this go. We went to Operation Gratitude with the best of intentions and myopic pseudo Grinch was constantly over our shoulders and grabbing things from us instead of just letting us get work done. It truly seemed like this was his way of hazing us. Luckily he was only there for about two hours. In my opinion it was two hours too long. It got better after that.

One of the coolest aspects of the whole program is the personal notes that go along with every package. At the armory when I was walking around there were boxes and boxes full of handwritten notes from adults and school children. If I were to go back and help out I feel that is what I would want to help with. All the letters need to be screened and put in each of the care packages. They need to be screened because sometimes people write things that are NSFW. The woman who was working on the notes that day told me a colorful story about one of the most touching notes she had ever read. She spoke of how the writer expressed their thanks for everything the soldier was doing for the country…It ended with the woman offering to make a personal dinner for the soldier and offering to make a special “desert,” for them when they got back stateside. Unfortunately that note got tossed. I mean what better way to express your love for our country. In my opinion, it is much better then wearing American flag suspenders.

Operation Gratitude – Justin's Experience
Project gratitude, an organization set up to send care packages to soldiers, unfortunately had a mishap with the 5hr energy drink in the packages exploding on the ride from D.C. On this day everyone was sorting through each care bag and sorting all the items of the bags where the 5hr energy hadn't exploded. The bags that were tainted with a 5hr energy that didn't make the trip were put to the side and any items that weren't ruined were cleaned and sorted.

We walked in and met Charlie who welcomed us and put us to work. He was really nice and even said we could take some 5hr energies if we wanted, since they weren't sending them out in fear they would explode again. So after the kid who was also at our table helping decided to go for one, I figured why not? WORST IDEA EVER! On a side note, the 5 hr energy is supposed to not have a crash. Turns out they are right, you feel like absolute crap for 5 hrs then at about the five hour mark you finally start feeling good again. So, drudged out on caffeine and shaking like I had Parkinson's I continued my work and our group flew through boxes, sorting away like there was no tomorrow. In between sorting we were constantly fending off our Mr. Patriotic supervisor who was a bit trigger happy on taking or sorted boxes kept coming by and telling us we were inefficient. He was a nice guy and did constantly thank us for our work, we just felt like we were by far the most efficient group and it just gave us what we needed to work that much faster.

Project Gratitude is a great cause, but unfortunately like most other volunteer work there are day where you are really busy and have many people to talk to and days that feel like you are sitting on an assembly line doing a repetitive motion for hours and hours. This was one of the later days. I'm looking forward to helping them out for their big shipment preparation in early April when there should be many more little projects to help out. It was still fun to hang out, and the work wasn't that physically demanding. So if you have a group of friends and want to hang out and talk while helping out a good cause, give it a shot, but you might want to skip on the 5hr energy shot!

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