Celebrating the Holidays Deployed
Updated: Jan 5, 2023
The military of the United States is deployed in most countries around the world, with between 160,000 to 180,000 of its active-duty personnel stationed outside the United States and its territories. MondayDelivery.com and Troopster.org have joined forces to ensure a few of these service members get some holiday cheer. Please help us send 3,000 holiday postcards by the New Year. Your personal message will be included on a postcard and placed in a care package.
Meet Monday Delivery
Since 2021, Monday Delivery has delivered over 150,000 postcards to military service members including recruits attending basic training, veterans, and those deployed around the globe.
Meet Troopster.org
Troopster was founded, Thanksgiving Day in 2015, by U.S. Navy Petty Officer Chelsea Mandello while she was still serving active-duty as a Navy Photojournalist.
The site was created to give friends and family of deployed service members a way to easily send their soldiers care packages, without facing any of the trouble of shopping or packing themselves.
The story began nearly two years before while Chelsea was serving aboard her seventh ship during an 11-month deployment to the Fifth Fleet area-of-operations. Forward-deployed and serving a mission against anti-piracy, Chelsea like others rarely received mail.
By the time the crew did receive mail it was the feeling of Christmas-at-Sea and Chelsea had received a care pack from her mother. Excited, she tore it open, reached inside, and was immediately heart broken when she realized that everything inside could no longer be eaten or used. Everything had either expired or melted. She coined this, a ‘Heartbreak in a Box.’
Chelsea realized that she wasn’t alone. Many of her fellow service members faced the same heartbreak and what’s more is that no one wanted to tell the thoughtful loved ones or supporters back home what had happened. After deployment, Chelsea set out to change this and to provide an opportunity for all of those at home to be able to send care packages easily and for those deployed to receive great care packs that they would love and use.
Since launching Troopster has changed the world of care packages. More than 12,000 U.S. troops have been impacted by Troopster and hundreds more are supported with Troopster packs every month thanks to the friends, families and communities who support our U.S. service members by way of Troopster.