From the AF Times:
“‘Part of our team’: 5
nonprofits honored for their military programs”
(Veterans Troy and Tracy Knowles
travel to a Phillies game on Aug. 17, 2019, as part of the PALS SkyHope's PALS
for Patriots program. Their volunteer pilot was Ken Conston. The organization
was honored Oct. 26 with a Fisher Service Award for Military Community Service.)
This year’s top winner in the
Fisher Service Award program connects volunteer pilots with injured and
disabled veterans and their caregivers — flying them at no cost to medical
centers, adaptive retreats and morale-boosting events throughout the eastern
U.S. “Our pilots love to fly veterans. … They look for the flights. They’re
passionate about giving back,” said Donna Collins, executive director of PALS
SkyHope. The organization provides the non-emergency medical flights to anyone
where distance is a problem, but for veterans, that expands to include other
programs that promote healing of the body, soul and mind, she said. The Fisher
Service Award for Military Community Service program provided a total of
$250,000 in grants from the Fisher House Foundation to PALS Skyhope and four
other nonprofit organizations for the innovative work they do to meet the
unique needs in the military and veteran communities. The five organizations were
chosen by a panel of judges from nearly 600 applications.
PALS SkyHope’s PALS for Patriots
program received the top award of $90,000, and four other nonprofits received
$40,000 each to expand programs that include free child care for military
families during medical appointments, training for military teen aspiring
entrepreneurs, no-cost comprehensive dental care for veterans, and grants for
extracurricular activities for military children. “The military service and
veteran service organizations are part of our team,” said Gen. John W. “Jay”
Raymond, chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, in remarks at the
ceremony Wednesday, to an audience that included the current winners as well as
previous winners and other nonprofit organizations. This was his last public
event before his retirement ceremony Nov. 2, he said. Over the course of his
career, Raymond said, he’s witnessed many times where the work of nonprofits
has helped service members or their family. “It’s no exaggeration to say you
save lives and you change lives,” he said. “Nonprofits that take care of our
troops, veterans and families are essential to our nation. You are true
patriots. … “On behalf of all of us service members, we thank you. You make a
huge, huge difference. “Military life by its very nature entails sacrifice, and
not just by the service member, but by the spouse, the children, our loved
ones,” he said, citing the frequent moves, the separations, the multiple
schools, and high stress work environments that take a toll. Raymond said he
and his wife, Mollie, and their three children moved to Japan in the middle of
his daughter’s freshman year. She was assigned to write a one-sentence poem in
a class at Yokota High School. Raymond became emotional as he read that
six-word poem. “‘My dad serves and I follow’,” Raymond read. “It was very
powerful,” he said. To the representatives of nonprofits in the audience, he
said, “You are appreciated. Your work matters tremendously. Please keep doing
what you’re doing. We need you and we are a more ready and capable force, and
our nation is more secure because of you.”
(Space Force Chief of Space
Operations Gen. John Raymond speaks at the Fisher Service Award ceremony Oct.
26 in which five nonprofits serving the military and veteran communities were
honored. With him onstage are Dave Coker, president of the Fisher House
Foundation, and Kelly Facer, a senior vice president at Military
Times/Sightline Media Group.)
PALS for Patriots PALS SkyHope’s
PALS for Patriots program connects volunteer pilots with injured and disabled
military veterans and their caregivers to medical centers and events that
promote healing, Collins said. “It‘s important for their recovery. …
There’s a huge need out there, and treatment isn’t always close to home.” “We
would love to fly more veteran flights,” Collins said, “but awareness of our
program is one of our challenges,” adding that the Military Times Foundation’s
donation of $34,000 in advertising to each of the organizations will help with
that effort. Pilots volunteer their own time, their own plane and
furnish the fuel. For every dollar the organization spends, the pilots spend
$4, Collins said. An online system allows veterans to request flights. About 70%
of the flights are covered by the volunteer pilots. “If they can’t fly them, we
make sure to get them there on a commercial flight,” paid for by the
organization, she said. Since the program began, SkyHope has flown more
than 1,200 veterans and their families. SkyHope also has a relationship with
Major League Baseball, Collins said. “We coordinate with the various clubs to
make it a special experience for our veterans. Many of the clubs provide
skyboxes, give the veterans tours, picture opportunities and announce their
presence at the games.”
Armed Services YMCA For
decades, Armed Services YMCA has worked to provide child care options for
military families as one of its many programs, and junior enlisted families are
their priority. One child care option is no-cost drop-in care during medical
appointments. The “children’s waiting room” program is now offered at 12
locations, including a new one that opened at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Oct. 25,
said Dorene Ocamb, ASYMCA’s chief development and marketing officer. With
the $40,000 in funding provided by the Fisher Service Award, Ocamb said, they
hope to be able to open more locations. “We want the families to have this, so
they can take care of themselves,” she said. In most locations, the
program is in a small space within the medical facility, where families can drop
off their children at no cost for up to two hours as they go to medical
appointments or pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy. Reservations are
required usually about 24 to 48 hours ahead to reserve a spot. In some
areas, the children’s waiting room is located off the installation, perhaps at
an ASYMCA chapter. At Fort Hood, Texas, there are programs at Darnall Army
Medical Center and at two ASYMCA chapters off the base. This year, they’re on
track to provide care for about 4,000 children between the three locations, she
said. In the year since the children’s waiting room opened at Darnell,
the previous commanding officer of the hospital told ASYMCA they had seen a 30%
decrease in the number of no-show appointments, she said. “People are actually
able to keep their appointments when they have child care,” Ocamb said. “We
think this is a really important program for military families in helping them
get access to the health care they need, and helps the health care system
provide sufficient care to military families.” “Our goal is to be at
capacity every day,” she said. In some areas, where they don’t have the
children’s waiting room, such as San Diego, they provide a voucher for free
drop-in care at the installation child development center.
Everyone for Veterans Dr.
Theresa Cheng began offering a free dental day in 2008 to give back to the
community, and launched the Everyone for Veterans program in 2017. In the past
five years, the organization has provided dental care to more than 900 veterans
and their family members, said Jessica Elwell, the executive director.
Volunteers have logged nearly 5,800 hours of service across 34 states and have
provided nearly $1.1 million in comprehensive dental care and other essential
needs. The $40,000 award will be used to explore more opportunities to
help veterans and their families. “This grant makes a tremendous impact
in the services and the supports we are able to provide,” Elwell said. “With
this increase in capacity, we are looking forward to expanding our services to
more states, partnering with more dental professionals and dental schools and
serving more veterans than ever before.” Typically, a veteran in the
program will receive an average of about $3,500 in care, but there have been
cases where a veteran received as much as $50,000 in donated comprehensive and
restorative dental care. While the dental program is their primary
focus, they’ve also noticed there are other stressors for veterans that
volunteers may be able to address. The organization’s Wingman Program helps
point veterans to needed resources, and provides tangible goods and other
practical support, she said. Examples have included providing a mattress for a
veteran who had been sleeping in an armchair and giving warm weather clothing
and gifts to children of veterans during the holidays.
Our Military Kids Our
Military Kids was founded in 2004 to provide grants for extracurricular
activities to children and teens, ages 3 to 18, of deployed National Guard and
Reserve members and post-9/11 combat-injured service members. Each
activity scholarship is worth up to $300. “We are hoping to provide up to 133
OMK scholarships with this $40,000 grant,” said Michelle Criqui, marketing and
communications manager for Our Military Kids. Sports are the most common
activities they fund, she said, but they also send kids to fine arts classes,
camp, tutoring and many more. And there are some unusual requests they have
fulfilled, such as log rolling, bull riding, aerobatics camp, motocross,
sailing lessons, robotics competitions and opera singing. Since 2004,
OMK has provided more than 80,000 activity scholarships worth $31 million to
children and teens in all 50 states and four territories, she said.
The Rosie Network’s Kidpreneur
Camp The Rosie Network’s Kidpreneur program is one-of-a-kind effort,
offering full-service training and support to military teens, typically ages 12
to 17, who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. The program was
launched in 2021 as a summer camp, and this $40,000 grant will help the
organization provide it year round, said Stephanie Brown, CEO and founder of
The Rosie Network. Each military teen will also receive a custom entrepreneur
workbook. The feedback “has been just out of control. It was amazing,”
Brown said. “There was no doubt we were going to do it again and just try to
grow it.” Kids today, especially military kids, have certain skills that
make them great entrepreneurs, she said. “They move, they have to reacclimate,
be the new person in town, and are outgoing.” They also tend to be
comfortable with technology. But it’s not just the program helping individual
military kids realize their entrepreneurial opportunities, she said. “It’s
really creating a network for them to help each other, to collaborate and
support each other. “That I find is the secret sauce, networking …
shared experiences, shared values,” she said. “Small business ownership
is the American dream. We’re helping to build the next generation of business
leaders. They will hire, they will give back and will in turn support military
families.” The teens can come to the program with an existing idea,
product or service, or they can come to the program in the concept stage, and
they’ll get help fleshing out their ideas, Brown said. “The first
Kidpreneur class I tuned in on, I couldn’t stop smiling. I had goose bumps,”
Brown said. “Why didn’t we do this 10 years ago?“
Military Times Foundation
partners with the Fisher House Foundation in the Fisher Service Award program,
previously known as the Newman’s Own Awards. “Military Times is proud to
support military-connected families and organizations like each of yours which
strive to improve lives of those in this community,” said Kelly Facer, senior
vice president for revenue operations at Military Times/ Sightline Media Group,
at the ceremony. “As is the case every year, our honorees exemplify the power
of community, cooperation and innovation in tackling the most important issues
for our nation’s heroes.” Since the program began in 1999, more than $2.75
million has been awarded to 200 nonprofits for innovative programs to improve
the quality of life of service members, veterans and their families. The Fisher
House Foundation is best known for its network of 93 comfort homes where
military and veteran families can stay at no cost while a loved one is
receiving medical treatment. The founder of that program, Zachary Fisher,
“taught us that there’s a dignity and majesty in the efforts of our armed
forces,” said Dave Coker, president of Fisher House Foundation. “It is well for
us to remember the noble deeds of those who have worn the uniform. That’s
something that guides us at Fisher House.” Over the past 20 years, Ken Fisher,
Zachary Fisher’s grand nephew, has continued that legacy. “Ken taught us that
‘thank you for your service’ is nice, but it’s not enough,” Coker said. “You
need to take that gratitude and put it into action in such a way that it
narrows that military-civilian divide. … “What I love about this [awards]
program is how we find others, other organizations and other leaders who are as
passionate and dedicated to supporting the military community as we are,” he
said. “It’s one thing to find them, and another thing to tell the story,”
adding that a big part of the effort is spreading awareness of what the groups
do. The judges for the awards were Mollie Raymond; Kelly Hokanson, spouse of
the chief of the National Guard Bureau; Tammy Fisher, trustee of the Fisher
House Foundation; Lynne Pace and Suzie Schwartz, both trustees as well as
spouses of retired generals; and Kelly Facer of Military Times.
^ It is important to recognize the hard work people and organizations/charities/companies do - especially when they are helping the Military and Veterans. ^
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