The holidays are a time for family and sharing, and this is what the Cherokee County Homeless Veterans Organization (CCHVP), which is part of American Legion Post 45 in Canton, Auxiliary Unit 45 in Canton, and American Legion Post 316 in Woodstock, Ga., recently accomplished.
Over the past 12 months, the partnership between Kimberly-Clark and CCHVP had developed into another dimension, and that is having CCHVP be a local veteran and community nonprofit distribution point for Kimberly-Clark’s SALUTE program. Over the past year, Kimberly-Clark has provided more than six tractor-trailer loads of commercial and retail products, valued at over $250K, to CCHVP to provide to local veteran and non-veteran organizations that cannot afford or do not have budget for the products this month. Kimberly-Clark provided CCHVP with three truckloads of Huggies pullups for boys and girls 2-5 along with wipes, Kleenex and other products, noted CCHVP director and Post 45 service officer Jim Lindenmayer. "This material amounted to over 60 pallets of pullups and over 40 pallets of other materials that we needed to find a way to distribute before the holidays."
Lindenmayer and his volunteers went to work looking how best to get this mass of product out to the community, especially since it was mostly targeted at infants, not something you normally see at the Legion level. Quickly two plans were developed to move the product to needy nonprofits, especially with the holidays coming up and the target audience being financially challenged both at the nonprofit level and the final end-user level.
One of the two plans was the targeting of veterans and local military organizations, and through his partnership with John Phillips, civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army for Georgia (North) and vice president of VETLANTA, a call was made to GANG Family Services. The idea took off and Lindenmayer received a call from the adjutant general of the Georgia National Guard, MG Thomas Carden Jr., that the National Guard Family Services would very much appreciate the proposed donation of product for distribution across the State of Georgia.
Lindenmayer, a former armored cavalry officer, went to work with the GANG G4 staff and the GANG Family Service group with Maj. Jim Clay, and developed a working plan to obtain at least one truckload of infant products from CCHVP. On Dec. 22, it all came together and over 20 pallets of material were donated.