Well Halx, I COULD plug the TFP. I already plug it on my own blog. The only reason I'm not sure it's a good plan is because the TFP isn't exactly family-friendly (nor should it be). If that's an issue, as I know there is a policy to do such, we can probably just kill this thread until I figure out how I want to handle it. I'm not 100% against a link back to the TFP, but then a lot of donations do come from family and christian type groups that might balk at such a thing being linked from the site. While I'd love to tell them to go screw themselves, the site isn't about me, it's about hooking up the troops.
If there IS anything to discuss or anything else we could work out, let me know. You know I'm always happy to pull traffic to the TFP (like from the Gaming forums
). I just don't know if it would be a great fit right now. Let me know...
-----Added 6/8/2008 at 09 : 12 : 09-----
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
Cards, poker chips, and green felt!
If you donate a good set of poker chips and some green felt, I guarantee they will be used almost continuously, and by a large number of people. It is easy overseas to hire a local carpenter to make a poker table for you...provided you have felt and the chips to play with. Cards too, to a lesser degree. We had a regular circuit of games when I was deployed. And we went wherever the game was several times a week. It made for a great change of scenery and we got to make a lot of new friends that way.
DVD's are abundant on a deployment as Haji Copies are nearly free and many are very good quality. I would not recommend going out of your way to donate any DVD's for that reason. Though if you have extras, it won't hurt.
Current Game Systems are very popular, XBox360 seems to be at the top of the pile right now. Most units will already have a player, so you will get the most bang for your buck out of the games.
Board Games will also get a lot of mileage. Monopoly, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Etc. Something that takes time to play.
Good books too! For whatever reason, most of the books we got were cheesy romance novels. Which some people really like, but not most soldiers. I think it is a product of wives and mothers sending the books they had on hand. Just about anything else will find an audience.
Magazines! Especially gun mags, motorcycle mags, and mens magazines (Maxim, Mens Journal, Etc).
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The man speaks the truth. Decks of cards get eaten by troops playing Spades all the time. We went through a deck a month easily just in my squad. Playing cards in the field can mess up cards pretty quickly.
When sending stuff to GamesForSoldiers, by all means feel free to include any entertainment type items, including magazines and such. We don't really go for the hygiene items as there are already MANY groups dedicated to pushing such things to troops. We had more soap and deodorant than we could've used in 3 years when I was there. LOL