Greenfield High School students are sending dozens of care packages and letters to Wisconsin soldiers recently deployed to Afghanistan this week.

The care package project began in December when students wrote and sent soldiers holiday greetings and expressed their thanks to them for their service. The high school homerooms “adopted” one soldier each; coincidentally, there were the same number of homerooms as soldiers.

The project began when social studies teacher Adrienne McKeown, who is helping to coordinate the project with the Greenfield High School Air Force Junior ROTC, and fellow members of the homeroom committee — art teacher Jeremy Chupp, band director Evan Marlowe and math teacher Elizabeth Siebenlist — wanted to use the holidays to focus on service projects.

The homeroom committee worked with GHS Air Force Junior ROTC commander Lt. Col. Andrew Davis, who used his contacts in the armed forces to find the names of deploying soldiers for the students to “adopt.”

On Friday, Feb. 2, the AFJROTC students began assembling the packages for mailing overseas.  Inside are gum, wet wipes, magazines, DVDs, cards, candy, beef jerky, hand sanitizer and other similar items.

“We were thinking about items that the soldiers would need and be easy to carry,” said McKeown, who added the project is teaching the students an important life lesson.

“We feel that it is important to build a sense of community and service with our students and feel that homeroom is a perfect place to do this,” she said. “We would like to honor those that have sacrificed so much for us. It is important for young people to understand the gift of giving thanks and doing things for others.”