Spirit of America at Work in Fallujah

Fallujah children with Spirit of America backpacks. Click image to view.

While walking a patrol with the Iraqi Army in Fallujah last week, I ran across a group of young children heading to school. Many of them had backpacks, and all of the backpacks were identical. This immediately made me think of Spirit of America’s school backpack program, so I contacted Jim Hake and Michele Redmond. Michele is confident that these backpacks are indeed part of the Marines “Benefit Day” outreach program in Al Anbar province. The Marines Benefit Day program was conceived by LtCol Jeff Nagel and sought to put 60,000 backpacks in the hands of Iraqi children in western Iraq. Spirit of America contributed over 10,000 backpacks filled with school supplies, along with a gift and an Arabic-language book for children.

It was just amazing to see this Spirit of America program at work in the heart of Fallujah. School supplies continue to be one of Spirit of America’s most popular requests. If you would like to contribute, please visit the Spirit of America website. The Gifts for Children project supplies school materials.

More images below…

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Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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4 Comments

  • Tincan Sailor says:

    Hey Bill is that my old 110 or your new SLR
    as always watch your 6 I will in DC sometime
    this summer and will pat a visit to
    Walter Reed, if your around wold like to hook
    up and say thanks for a grate job…

  • Spirit of America at Work in Fallujah

    Courtesy of The Fourth Rail:
    While walking a patrol with the Iraqi Army in Fallujah last week, I ran across a group of young children heading to school. Many of them had backpacks, and all of the backpacks were identical. This immediately made me thi…

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  • Michael says:

    Bill, thanks for showing this. They’re doing a fantastic job.

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