Sisters' brainchild gives boost to military families
8:40 a.m. Thursday, November 22, 2007
Three years ago, sisters Rachel and Kelsi Okun sat down here to map out how to give thanks not just to U.S. troops, but their relatives who sacrifice so much.
"We're trying to do what we can as a little family to help those families out there. It helps the families know that we are thinking of them," said Rachel, co-founder of ThanksUSA.org, which launched today.
The site helps kids struggling to pay for school supplies or college tuition with a parent deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"They give us the right to be who we can be, and we want to give it back to them," said Kelsi, the other co-founder of the Web site that helps raise money to help kids go to school.
The girls love treasure hunts. That's why they created one online to help raise money for their charity ThanksUSA.org. Their project got a lift from President Bush.
Thanks to their dad, Bob Okun, a Republican lobbyist for NBC/Universal, the girls have given out more than a thousand scholarships worth at least $1,000 apiece. One such scholarship went to Eleanor Cassilly, a freshman at Catholic university, who found it difficult to pick a college while her father was away in Iraq.
"I had to do my college applications and my whole search with just my mom," Cassilly said.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says non-profits are essential to helping military families when the federal budget is so tight.
"And it just shows what one person can do -- or in this case two people can do, I guess," Spellings said.
The girls swear they don't have designs on public office. But, with the gusto they have for the latest online treasure hunt, a career in sales just may be in the cards.
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