WITH THE PURPLE BAG PROJECT AT MCBHS

BY HANNAH GILL

After the whiskey is gone, Crown Royal’s iconic purple bags are being given a second life as care packages for active American military heroes around the world. This year, everyone attending the Bucking Horse Sale will have a chance to fill a purple bag and write a note to accompany the bag as it travels overseas to a military member.

“Crown Royal has been supporting our troops for over 10 years now,” says Thomas Moss, who works in marketing for Crown Royal and is responsible for bringing the Purple Bag Project to Miles City. “We will be set up for people to fill up the bags at the Bucking Horse Sale itself, so we will have people file in and start picking out the items they are interested in and then we will bag it up and it will be deposited in a cool Crown Royal mailbox that we retrofitted to collect the bags.”

Everyone will have an opportunity to fill out a note to accompany the bag that they fill, but Moss says all the notes will be reviewed prior to shipping to make sure there is nothing inappropriate or hateful.

“Crown Royal provides all the supplies needed, the bag itself, the donated items and the notepads,” Moss says.

Nobody likes their cookies or granola bars to smell like shampoo or deodorant, so traditionally, the bags at an event focus on either perishable foods or toiletry items. This year, the booth’s focus at the Bucking Horse Sale will be on toiletry items and Moss has forecasted around 500 bags to be filled in Miles City. After the bags are filled, they will be sent to a program partner, Packages From Home, based in Arizona, where they will join thousands of other purple bags filled out at similar events throughout the country before they are batched and then sent overseas.

“These Purple Bag events happen at bars, sporting events, the CMAs, a lot of celebrities pack bags, we’ve had people pack bags at Walmarts and grocery stores, anything you can think of,” says Megan Richards, program director for Packages from Home.

When there are no Purple Bag events happening, bags can also be filled through the Purple Bag Project’s website where anyone can go online, virtually fill out a personalized note and choose what food items to “pack” that will join the rest of the purple bags, along with other packages to be sent, at the Packages From Home distribution center.

The Purple Bag Project has partnered with Packages From Home, and to date over one million purple bags have been packed and sent to military members around the world. Packages from Home was started when a military mom began sending “packages from home” to her son and his entire squadron. She organized packing parties and the idea blossomed into the large charity that it is today.

Since the partnership began, consumers can donate back their purple bags to the program through their local Crown Royal retailer, and for every bag donated to the Purple Bag Project, one dollar will be donated to Packages from Home to support their mission.

“There are over 174,000 US troops in over 176 countries worldwide,” Richards says. “We will send packages to any US military address we receive that is overseas. We have seen an uptick recently in requests from areas in Europe surrounding the war in Ukraine, we do send to naval ships as well. We also use those items sometimes for active duty here domestically and for veterans here at home as well.”

Packages are sent based on addresses that are received through the request form on Packages From Homes’ website, and the forms allows for special requests, as well as an option for canine handlers to receive a Bones From Home package for their partner.

“Military members can sign themselves up or a family, friend or significant other can, as long as you have your military member’s military address overseas,” Richards says. “We are luckily able to fulfill about 100 percent of the requests we receive.”