|
Marybeth Henry
Founder of
Help a Military Spouse Care Basket Campaign
If you’ve ever
taken a look at the burdens that other people
have to bear and want to do something to help,
you will find you have much in common with
Marybeth Henry, a Washington D.C. area woman who
founded "Help a Military Spouse”, a campaign to
send comforting care baskets to those whose
spouses are serving overseas in the military.
Marybeth was born
in 1971 in Midland, Michigan to Charles and
Margaret Bash. When she was four years old, she
moved to Walnut Creek, California and lived
there with her family until June 1980. Her
family was then transferred to (at the time
West) Germany, to a small town called Stade in
the north of the country and she attended the
International School in Hamburg. In 1985 her
family moved back to Midland where she finished
high school. From there she moved to
Washington, DC to attend Georgetown University
in 1988 and she has lived in the Metro DC area
ever since. She graduated in 1992 with a B.S.
in Language Arts, majoring in French.
Marybeth has been
involved in running a home-based business for
over 7 years. When her daughter was 14 months
old, Marybeth was involved in a New Moms support
group. Since she, with the help of her husband,
had set up her own small business, Marybeth
asked the group moderator if she could do a
presentation on “How to Start a Home-Based
Business”. When she received the okay, Marybeth
began collecting resources, including a list of
moms who worked from home and could be a
resource/mentor to moms who might want to start
their own business. Out of that came the idea
for a Home-Based Business Expo, with the focus
on sharing business opportunities that might
interest other moms. For this event Marybeth
created the name WAHMfest with the corresponding
site,
www.WAHMfest.org Today, WAHMfest is
spreading across the U.S. Feeling that WAHMfest
should support other women through different
forms of community service, Marybeth, through
WAHMfest, has arranged such events as a Fashion
Show to Fight Cancer, been a sponsor for the
Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter “Race for
Shelter”, and most recently added the Help a
Military Spouse Care Baskets campaign. When
asked if her faith had anything to do with her
serving others in this way Marybeth responded,
“I’m a cradle Episcopalian,” she said. “My
parent’s faith has always been a big part of our
lives.”
At the end of
2003, with the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan)
continuing with no end in sight, Marybeth
started thinking about ways she could support
the effort and the troops. It occurred to her
that there was actually quite a bit being done
to support soldiers, but she found herself
concerned about the family that was left behind
while the soldier was gone. Having been a
“single mom” for three months while her husband
was a way on a business project, she really
appreciated what military spouses have to go
through raising a family on their own. She
decided to prepare small gift baskets (“care
baskets”) that would let these military spouses
know that we, the American people, appreciated
THEIR sacrifices as well. She began looking for
business sponsors for the baskets and sent them
out to families who were nominated.
Nominations are
taken from friends and/or family members for
parents (predominately moms) who are at home
while their spouse is overseas in the military.
The organization then solicits business
sponsorships to cover the cost of creating the
baskets. As sponsorships come in, they create a
basket and ship it out to the spouse with a
letter explaining (s)he is receiving the care
basket and a special note of encouragement or
love (if the nominator chooses to add one).
Marybeth is not
alone in this endeavor. “My office assistant,
Shannon Rittenhouse, does a lot of the work
involved with creating the baskets,” says
Henry. Her other helpers are the sponsors of
the baskets of whom she says, “Without sponsors,
we couldn’t even create the baskets!”
If you are
interested in participating in the Help a
Military Spouse program you can do so in two
ways. First, you can nominate a spouse who is
currently “holding down the fort” or you can
sponsor a basket or baskets that can be sent out
to spouses who have been nominated. Baskets can
be sponsored in the following increments:
(1)
for
$25
(2)
for
$45
(3)
for
$60
For more
information visit:
http://www.wahmfest.org/helpaspouse/
|
|
