Virginia Tech faculty and students are working with a former Hokie now in the U.S. Army and several local businesses to donate school supplies to Iraqi children in impoverished villages.

"Operation Provide Classroom Comfort," as the drive is called, began in the early months of the war in Iraq with the help of a Tech alumni chapter in Tennessee.

But a group of Tech community members has relaunched the effort in Blacksburg with the goal of sending 4,000 packages of school supplies to U.S. troops to distribute to Iraqi children as a gesture of goodwill and trust building.

Maj. Mark Sherkey, a 1995 Tech graduate who now works in the Pentagon, said he and other troops in his 101st Airborne Division unit were astonished by the conditions they witnessed in the Iraqi schools in 2003.

Many schools lacked windows, doors, heat and electricity, not to mention basic school supplies. Students were often forced to share desks or huddle together in the winter months for warmth because their decrepit classrooms offered no shelter from the elements.

"It was not a conducive environment to learning," said Sherkey, who commanded a battery of the 1st Battalion, 377th Field Artillery Regiment.

Like many units in Iraq, Sherkey's unit sought funding from the military or federal government to help rebuild some of the schools in between their combat responsibilities.

Sherkey, who was living in Nashville, Tenn., before deployment, got word through e-mail to members of Tech's Middle Tennessee alumni chapter that they were looking for school supplies.

By Christmas 2003, the supplies started pouring in.

"We received boxes of school supplies from, I think, 26 states," Sherkey said Wednesday during a telephone interview. "It came from churches to schools to businesses to families."

Sherkey's unit helped distribute more than 2,500 pounds of school supplies to more than 2,000 children.

"This was just something small that we could immediately fix ... and it made the soldiers feel good," Sherkey said. "We could see the smiles on the children's faces."

Nearly two years later, Sherkey was talking with Susan Magliaro, director of Tech's School of Education, at a function when Operation Provide Classroom Comfort came up.

The effort was subsequently relaunched.

The donations drive officially began during the Oct. 27 Hokies game versus Boston College.

Gamegoers were asked to buy pre-packaged sets of school supplies from the Christiansburg Wal-Mart and drop them off at the game.

Volunteers have also collected cash donations as well as loose school supplies.

Drive organizers have set a goal of supplying 4,000 students in 10 Iraqi schools with classroom necessities such as pens, paper, crayons, glue sticks and a bonus yo-yo.

Patricia Gaudreau, a doctoral candidate helping coordinate the project, said the project seemed like an appropriate activity for the School of Education.

Members of the Corps of Cadets, other Tech students and alumni have joined the School of Education in the drive.

Football coach Frank Beamer has endorsed the project and recorded a video statement seeking donations.

"We have children over there in Iraq whose schools are falling apart, and schools are really the basis for the community," Gaudreau said.

The drive wraps up Saturday.