In the midst of the traveling, gift giving, and hours spent in the kitchen preparing delicious holiday food, it can be easy for the essence of the holidays to be obscured. Joyfulness in the presence of family, friends, and loved ones lies at the heart of the holiday season, as does thankfulness for the mere opportunity to spend valuable time with the people we care about the most.
For some, however, duty and circumstance can be an obstacle when comes to having a chance to savor the precious moments that make the holidays such a special time of year.
At Carvana, the “Haulerdays” are similarly a time-honored tradition for many of our team members. Each year, the Carvana team from coast-to-coast comes together under a unified theme to celebrate and appreciate that which we are thankful for, and this year, we are taking the time to participate in the joyful tradition of sending and receiving holiday mail.
One element of this year’s celebration is the promotion of social wellness. To do that, Team Carvana is writing and collecting letters for A Million Thanks, an organization that provides support and appreciation to our active and veteran military men and women through sending letters and granting betterment of life wishes. Their main goal is to send thousands of letters to troops overseas who can’t be home with their families or maybe don’t have families.
For Chelsea, a titles specialist at Carvana, the idea of a letter writing campaign was born out of a desire to take the time to say “Thank you!” to the brave men and women of our armed forces who have sacrificed so much.
“Everything is at our fingertips,” said Chelsea. “A text message takes five to ten seconds. An email takes a few minutes. I think we need to spend more time in how we talk to each other. This project was a great way to implement that by sending letters to our amazing troops and military overseas, who, unfortunately, don’t get to spend the holidays with their families. I wanted to let them know they are appreciated and that they are loved and that they are in our thoughts.
“I hosted a letter writing party for my team and I sent out a Slack [message] saying, ‘Hey, if you want to come write a card to the troops, here are the details.’ The team came in and did it and it was fabulous. I was just thinking of this on a tiny level and doing it at Carvana’s HQ3 location. But then I thought, ‘Let’s get Tyla involved and make it a company wide project.'”
According to Tyla, a senior specialist for perks and wellness at Carvana, Chelsea’s idea was basically a no-brainer.
“When we saw Chelsea’s Passion Project come across, everyone loved it,” said Tyla. “Sending letters to people in and around the holidays is just such a great and thoughtful thing, and once we laid eyes on it, we knew we wanted to make it as big as we can.
“The is the fifth year that CarvanaFit and Haulerdays synced up to do a challenge resulting in a giveaway for all who participated by offering a free sweater to anyone who wrote a letter, resulting in the fun challenge name, ‘Letters For Sweaters.'”
And the outpouring of support from the Carvana family proved to be substantial. Over 500 letters written by Carvana team members flooded in from all over the country, as Chelsea and her team were blown away by the response. In fact, one special letter, specifically addressed to Chelsea, nearly brought her to tears.
“I was going through the mail and out came a letter for me,” said Chelsea. “[This woman] thanked me for my idea and she was so grateful that Carvana sponsored it. And it just felt really good to be appreciated and acknowledged for doing this.
“I’m just hoping that we are spreading the joy this holiday season between the Carvanians and our soldiers.”
