MLES Student Council to host Book Drive for the DAV
The Mountain Lake Public Elementary School (MLES) Student Council will host a Book Drive on Monday, November 30 through Friday, December 18.
During that time span, MLES Student Council members will be collecting a variety of books – hard cover, paperback, damaged, unused, no longer wanted, dictionaries, encyclopedias, hymnals, college and school textbooks, children’s books, cookbooks and telephone books. Books that will no longer be shelved because they will be recycled.
Collection boxes will be placed by the elementary office and the elementary library. If someone has a large donation and needs assistance, call the school at 427-2325, Extension #164 and leave Annette Kunkel a message and arrange for a pick up. Kunkel, a sixth-grade teacher, and Amy Hartzler, school social worker, are MLES Student Council Co-Advisors. In addition, collection boxes will be available at the school’s series of three Monday night holiday concerts.
The members DAV (Disabled American Veterans)-Chapter 15 of New Ulm will take the donated book collections apart and shred the paper. These military service veterans get paid by the pound for the books. The money goes directly to the Veteran’s Fund. This is one of the group’s ongoing fundraising efforts in support of a van that transports veterans to medical appointments and to purchase wheelchairs for disabled veterans.
According to the president of the Mountain Lake Public Elementary School Student Council, Sam Stade, “Every year at this time the student council did a food drive. This year, we decided to do something different. Our co-advisor, sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Kunkel, learned of the work of the DAV Chapter and we thought it would be idea to support disabled veterans as they supported us in protecting our country.”
About the DAV of Minnesota
These men and women must struggle to regain health, reshape lives transformed by disability, learn new trades or professions, and rejoin the civilian world. At each step, they need help to help themselves. At each step, the Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota is there for them.
The Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota is membership group made up of women and men who have been disabled in our nation’s defense.
They are dedicated to one clear mission – to better the lives of Minnesota’s disabled veterans and their families.
They employ a variety of strategies to help achieve this mission:
+ Free, professional assistance to veterans and their families in obtaining benefits and services earned through military service and provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and other agencies of government.
+ Outreach concerning its program services to the American people generally and to disabled veterans and their families specifically.
+ Represent the interests if disabled veterans, their families, their widowed spouses and their orphans before Congress, the White House and the Judicial Branch, as well as state and local government.
+ Extend DAV’s mission of hope into the communities where these veterans and their families live through a network of state-level Departments and local Chapters.
+ Provide a structure through which disabled veterans can express their compassion for their fellow veterans through a variety of volunteer programs.
Formed in 1920 and chartered by Congress in 1932, the Disabled American Veterans is the official voice of America’s service-connected disabled veterans – a strong, insistent voice that represents Minnesota’s disabled veterans, their families and survivors.
When the troops came home from World War I, 300,000 carried grim reminders of war – disabling injuries, battle scars, gas-seared lungs, and prolonged illnesses. Following a tumultuous hero’s welcome, America wiped the horror of war from its mind almost as quickly as the ticker tape was swept from the streets of New York City. The nation’s makeshift response to the needs of its disabled heroes soon broke down. These angry young veterans took matters into their own hands, starting local self-help groups that soon merged to become the DAV.
Since then, in Minnesota chapters, including Chapter 15 in New Ulm – as well as other chapters across the nation – including the national DAV, have served as the official voice of America’s service-connected disabled veterans – a strong, insistent voice that represents all of America’s three million disabled veterans, their families and survivors.
The DAV’s network of services – free of charge to all veterans and members of their families – is totally supported by membership dues and charitable contributions from the American public.
For more information, go to http://www.davmn.org/.
