AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar --
“I
think this project is helpful to the children, especially if they have friends
or family members that are in the military,” said Airman 1st Class Cassie
Starr, a security forces Airman assign to the 379th Expeditionary Security
Forces Squadron here, who participated in the project. “It
helps explain to them what it is we do, so they can see that maybe it’s not all
that scary and they can actually take away good things from it. Hopefully this
will give them a positive mentality so they don’t have to worry about their
friends or family who are serving in the armed forces.”
The students put
together scripted questions they wanted to ask their assigned heroes and also
provided their heroes with short biographies about themselves.
“The little girl I talked to has
horses and wanted to know if I have any pets,” said Starr. “She wanted to know
what I do on a daily basis and if I like it here.”
The project was put together
with the help of Wilson and Staff Sgt. Tamika Whitfield, 379th ESFS, who served
together during a deployment in 2008. A total of 26 students were paired up
with one of the 26 volunteers from the 379th ESFS.
During a
discussion, Wilson
mentioned to Whitfield that he was talking about one of his prior deployments
in his classroom and was intrigued by the questions the students were asking
him, such as “How did you get water over there?”
“That’s why he decided to put on this event,”
said Whitfield. “He reached out to me because he knew I was deployed, and with
the help of my fellow defenders who volunteered to assist we were able to get
this event to happen.”
With many parents
deployed here, the video meet-and greets, were intended to help family members
get an idea of how well things are for their loved ones, despite being far from
home supporting operations throughout
the Central Command area of operations.
“I know we have a lot of parents
deployed out here that are away from their families,” said Whitfield. “We want
to let our families and kids know that we are all doing good out here, and that they don’t have to stress about it,
we’re doing fine. That kind of puts a lot of our families at ease and that’s
one of the reasons we’re doing this project. We can let our families see how
well we’re doing and that can kind of put the stress away.”