Today's post is written by Kathy Roth-Douquet, co-founder and CEO of Blue Star Families. She is an author, attorney, former White House and Department of Defense appointee, and a frequent commentator in the media on patriotism, military service, and civilian-military relations.

Kelly Henry is the kind of person who volunteers for Blue Star Families. Kelly is a Navy veteran and Army wife, and the mom of two beautiful children adopted from China. She’s our new Fort Bragg Blue Star Families chapter director, and living our goal of empowering military family members to use their insight and experience to make a difference in their community. In a few short months Kelly has put in to action a number of Blue Star Family programs - she held an “Operation Appreciation” event at a local veterans' hospital brightening their day with letters from civilians who wanted to express thanks for their service. She’s brought our programs in front of Bragg leadership and the very supportive Mayor's office of Fayetteville. Now she is hard at work on a couple more key areas to the military community - employment and child literacy. Right now she’s in the midst of assisting in the planning of an education and employment fair for vets and spouses in her community, and is organizing a large scale Books on Bases event, a Blue Star Families initiative that brings free new children’s books to installation schools, libraries and giveaways directly to kids. If that’s not enough, Kelly is working with the community resource center Fayetteville Cares to create a BSF page with all local resources for military families. Great job, Kelly!

I’d like to describe Amy Granillo too. Amy is a a Marine wife and entrepreneur stationed in Los Angeles. She helped BSF participate in World Read Aloud Day by reading to military children. Amy is involved with family readiness groups from Los Angeles to San Diego, she’s a LINKS Mentor for the Marine Corps, and she organizes meals for new moms and grieving families. Amy will be hosting a BSF Books On Bases event for the Air Force in Los Angeles, presenting our spouse employment project at a Camp Pendleton base wide event in April, and briefing spouses on BSF's mission at a 12th Marine Corps District Spouse Conference. Amy and Kelly both demonstrate how engaged individuals in their communities can truly make substantive change.

Volunteerism is the heart of Blue Star Families, a nationwide non-profit engaging military families to build strength and resilience and tie them closer to the larger community through meaningful partnerships and service. Volunteerism is in our DNA - every one of our staff volunteered for the first year to get the organization going. We’ve now grown to nearly 70 chapters, over ten thousand volunteers, and half a million participants in our programs. We have dozens of ways for military family members and civilians to volunteer to make a meaningful difference, from morale programs, to substantive efforts on topics such as suicide prevention, employment, and reintegration. We have many volunteer opportunities for civilians who want a tangible way to support our military community too.

Operation Honor Cards is our major initiative with the First Lady’s Joining Forces program to create an atmosphere of ‘shared service’ and a WWII sense of ‘all give some’ by encouraging all Americans to perform community service, and tie that service to the commitment given by military families and veterans. Operation Honor Cards asks people to make a pledge of community service of any kind, in solidarity with and in honor of the service of the military community. It features a website which tallies hours of pledges committed and fulfilled. The First Lady announced Operation Honor Cards last April with a goal of achieving 3 million hours of service pledged. Less than a year later, we have over 21 million hours pledged, and 12 million hours served! We’d love to have more individuals and organizations join their pledges to OHC - please visit www.honorcards.org for more information. We are proud to collaborate with Points of Light Institute, the American Red Cross, Service Nation and the Corporation for National and Community Service in this project.

Blue Star Families strives to serve all members of the military community from our service members to our spouses to our children, and actively seeks to engage the civilian community in our work. Through our programming, resources, and networking, our volunteers support our military through local chapters. We are currently seeking leaders in local communities to serve as chapter directors, support volunteers, and special events volunteers. Blue Star Families believes that everyone can find a unique way to serve our country, and the best place to start is through volunteerism.

For more information about how you can serve with us, please contact bianca@bluestarfam.org.