Hi Everybody-I had the great honor and privilege this past Saturday to go shopping for some of our own homeless vets. I found out some startling and disturbing news Saturday when Jeane, Linda and I went shopping as part of our non-profit work where I have been working since mid September.
What I found out was that 1 in 4 of the homeless people in the U.S. are veterans. There is a report in USA Today that: (In all of 2006, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point during the year.) The link to the rest of the article is below
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-07-homeless-veterans_N.htm To me that is heartbreaking as well as appalling. These are men and women that served in past wars as well as lots from the Afghan and Iraq War. One thing we know in this country that the freedoms that we enjoy are NOT FREE!
There is a price to be paid. In my humble opinion our servicemen & women served their country and they should be taken care of now. It is truly disturbing that our government isn't doing a better job of this. This is a LOT of people that are falling thru the cracks in our society. My question is WHY!!!!!!!!!!!
On the 20 and 21st of November we as a organization set up outside Sam's Club and asked for an array of different kind of supplies that we on their wish list. Among the items were personal care, toiletries, tents, blankets and more. We did pretty good, but with the holiday and other organizations like the Salvation Army and Toys for Tots who were also out collecting our donations were not as good as they were when we collected for the flood victims in Ga a little while earlier.
In addition we also got cash donations. So this past Saturday us 3 ladies went shopping and we had a ball. We wiped their shelves out of many different items and they had to call extra help to the registers when we went to check-out. <BIG SMILE> In the first store alone we filled up 6 shopping carts and at the next one we filled 3 big ones.
In addition to that shopping spree that day. Linda's neighbor had a older fellow, who is retired and had worked at a shoe store had shoes that he wanted to donate. So after we finished at both stores we headed to the neighbors house. There was a good size room in the downstairs of his home that was filled with shoes from when he worked there. Apparently whatever his job was, they gave him NEW shoes.
So many of them were still in boxes and had never been worn. We probably got 400 new pair of mens dress shoes. We filled two trucks and part of the van that had our shopping spree stuff. Then we took it back to our warehouse and unloaded it.
Now at our weekly Monday meeting we shared what we had done. Now the Rev Ron(the founder)wanted to go shopping as well and we still had donation money so he went last night with his wife, daughter and daughter-in law. In addition to personal care and such, he also got ready to eat non-perishable food items.
On the next 3 Saturdays we will be setting up at one of the local grocery stores. While they are looking for array of items. I think they may focus on non-perishable food items. Now if we get monetary donations which I am sure we will, then one of the things we are going to do is go to the local thrift shops to get good used mens jackets.
The vets that we know of are in Boston Mass, Indiana, Ohio and Los Angeles, but I am sure they have them in every state. There was a BIG military base(Fort Drum)in N.Y. where I lived that deployed LOTS of troops to both the current wars. One of the things that we have done is whatever we don't get in supplies then we take the donation money and get what wasn't donated.
The job I have had with this is getting all the supplies ready for shipping. We sent out one load on Tuesday of last week. It was such a wonderful feeling doing that shopping as well as inventorying and packing up what we collected. We truly don't realize how lucky we are.
So on this Thursday December 3rd when you are home with a roof over your head ,a nice warm bed, a HDTV, and a full stomach. I hope, like me, you will be THANKFUL for all the blessings and freedoms we have because of these men and women who gave so much. I also feel VERY blessed to be a part of serving these men and women in some small way. Below are some of the pics of the items we collected.
If you see a vet thank him or her for their service.Take a listen to this very true SONG.
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