Project Rudolph, which brightens the holidays for thousands of soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines at Christmas time, is gearing up and is in need of Santa’s helpers, founder Tawny Campbell said.

      Tawny and her Army husband, Joe, began the charity in 2006. Read all about it in this week’s Spouse Calls.

      Project Rudolph distributes gift bags to wounded and deployed troops, Some are mailed downrange and some are handed out in person at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, nearby Fisher Houses and at the Ramstein PAX Terminal.

      Each bag contains a Christmas ornament and poem, handwritten letters, and candy.
The charity utilizes many local volunteers in the Kaiserslautern Military Community in Germany, as well as volunteers from all over the world, Tawny said. In fact, Tawny’s family back in the states is very involved.

      Groups and individuals from anywhere can provide handwritten letters, decorated lunchbags or homemade Christmas ornaments. These can be mailed to Project Rudolph for use in gift bags. Guidelines for letters can be found by clicking here.

      Local volunteers in Germany get together to fill the bags in early December and hand them out during the Christmas holidays.

      Last year on the first two Saturdays in December, Tawny said 300-plus volunteers showed up to assemble bags, and more will be needed this year.

      Volunteers also are needed to hand out bags or package and mail them, and Tawny is currently looking for a place to store materials and assemble the bags.

      This is the third Christmas for the project, and Tawny said volunteers’ responses have been as positive as the recipients’.

      “People would say ‘I can only be there for an hour,’ and then they would stay 3 or 4 hours,” she said. “Then they’d come back the next day and the next.
There’s something addicting about service.”

       Tawny maintains a Web site for all her charities. Click here for links to all her charitable endeavors, including Operation Angel, Project Portrait and her book: “Dear Soldier.”

•        Operation Angel provides gift bags year round for wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
•        Project Portrait utilizes Tawny’s skills as a professional photographer.
  “I had a friend whose fiancé was killed in Iraq two days before he was supposed to come home,” Tawny said. “The only photos she had of him were snapshots.”
         Tawny said she decided no one should have to spend an entire deployment – or a lifetime – with only snapshots, so she began taking family portraits for those about to deploy for 180 days or longer.
         “You can look at these photos and see your whole family as a complete unit and have that hope that in five months – or fifteen moths – that unit will be created again.”
         As a part of Project Portrait, Tawny also takes photos and creates digital photo albums of babies born at LRMC whose dads are deployed.
•        Her book “Dear Soldier,” is a collection of some of the best letters written by grateful Americans for deployed and wounded troops during the first season of Project Rudolph.
        “We got over 2,000 letters that year,” Tawny recalled. “I had to screen them all to make sure they are appropriate and sensitive to the needs of wounded troops. We read every single one.”
  Tawny said she was touched by the letters and wanted them to have a broader audience.
        “Why should I and the soldier who gets that one letter, be the only ones to see how much love and respect people have for the members of the military?” she asked.
  A publisher agreed with her, and “Dear Soldier” was in print the following summer.
        Sales of the book benefit the charities, Tawny said.

      Why – with her husband deployed, one small child at home and one on the way – does she devote so much time to her charitable work?

      “If I was in the situation of the deployed soldier – the one away from their families – how would I like to be treated?” Tawny said she asked herself.  “Then you find a way to fill that gap. That’s all it is, the Golden Rule.”

      Anyone interested in helping with any of these endeavors, can contact Tawny at taznjo@hotmail.com.

      Tawny said she is also available to give presentations to schools and other groups, telling about what she does, why she does it and how people can help.