Electric Co-op Today

How do you get 2,600 pounds of school supplies from an apartment in Mississippi to a military facility in Indiana, so it can ultimately get to children in Afghanistan?

Members of the Afghanistan National Police deliver school supplies to girls’ school staff members in Nangaresh. (Photo By: U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Chanise Epps, Nuristan Provincial Reconstruction Team Public Affairs)

You call in some electric co-op help; that’s how.

The story really begins in 2009, when Marine Corps Capt. Matthew Freeman phoned home from Afghanistan. He told his mother Lisa, a retired teacher, how the children there were desperate for paper and pencils, and asked her to start a collection.

Two days after that call, Matthew Freeman was killed by a sniper.

Lisa Freeman later rallied the Boy Scouts in her hometown of Richmond Hill, Ga., and soon enough, the supplies her son had asked for were Afghanistan-bound. That led to the creation this past May of “The Matthew Freeman Project: Pens & Paper for Peace,” a national effort to get school supplies to Afghan children.

Among the early supporters was Coastal Electric Cooperative. The Freeman family belongs to the Midway, Ga.-based co-op and Lisa Freeman approached people there.

“We were emotionally drawn to the project,” said J. Mark Bolton, the co-op’s vice president of communications, marketing and economic development. And, recognizing the need for trucks to move supplies, Whit Hollowell, Coastal Electric’s CEO, suggested the nation’s electric co-ops could play a role. With more than 900 electric co-ops in the U.S., that turned out to be incredibly insightful.

GENEROSITY

Fast forward to Sept. 3 of this year, when Mississippi’s Gulfport High School held a pep rally. Matthew Freeman’s widow, Theresa, lives in the city and had asked student council representatives if they would be willing to collect school supplies. They were not only willing: They were able. At the rally, Theresa Freeman was presented with more than 5,000 items, filling 38 plastic tubs, each weighing 70 pounds.

“I’m blown away by how much they have come together for the project,” she said.

The tubs were brought to Theresa Freeman’s apartment, while the logistics of getting them to Afghanistan were worked out. But time was of the essence, because Theresa, an Air Force captain, was going out of the country in a few weeks.  Read more

Tags: Co-op News, Commitment to Community