Prescott City Mayor Rowle Simmons presents a letter of appreciation to Tammy Linn for her efforts in the  Packages for our Troops project.

Further Information: Arizona Department of Education Character In Action Yavapai County United Way Tammy Linn describes the PFOT project (4.8 MB):

When Tammy Linn, Executive Director of theYavapai County United Way heard that students were having a tough time when their parents in the armed forces got deployed - and deployed again - out of the country, and the schools had no funds for counseling, she knew she had to do something for both the kids and the troops.

Linn has held her position with United Way for 13 months. And in addition to her duties with United Way, Linn is the president and founder of the Character Counts program being used across the state in Arizona schools. Linn is also the mother of three young boys. As you can imagine, she is a very busy woman.

Using her dual roles with the United Way and Character Counts, Linn was able to develop a project that would allow school kids and community members to write letters and donate needed items to send to the troops who are stationed overseas. She called it Packages for our Troops (PFOT).

Linn explained, "My vision, and our Board's vision was to do more than just take a dollar and give a dollar. It was to make a community impact. We've done a lot of projects in this community that involve no money, and [Packages for our Troops is] one of the most recent ones [that] probably touched my heart more than anything that I've done in my past 35 years of volunteering..."

Samples of the letters and colored pictures sent to the troops.  Download a PDF copy of the letter and the artwork.

The goals for the project were simple:

• To involve students, parents, teachers, administrators, community organizations and businesses throughout Yavapai in a community-service / citizenship project that will support the American Troops.                                                           
• To provide a replicable “model” community-wide service project that supports character development and good citizenship.

To get PFOT launched, Linn worked with four local school superintendents, (who were honorary chairmen) and 30 local schools. Teachers integrated this service project into writing, art, reading and social studies classes, having the students write letters and color and draw pictures to send to servicemen and women. Some children were too young, and for them, Linn had pictures online that the kids could download and color.

Everyone possible got involved, even kids on probation from the juvenile detention centers were able to help by packing boxes or sort out donations.

The City of Prescott allowed the use of an empty building to store all the items PFOT was collecting. Local businesses, large and small, pitched in. The Postal Service helped to write out over 1,400 shipping labels. At the end, it took five months and over 8,000 volunteer hours, but 2000 boxes were sent on their way complete with more than 4000 hand-written letters and artwork and various goodies sure to warm a service man or woman's heart.

In short, this was not just a United Way project, or a Tammy Linn project. This was a community project, and that's exactly what Linn was hoping to achieve.

You can listen to Linn explain to the Prescott City Council how the project unfolded in the audio link above.