Rallying Veterans and Families around our Afghan Allies

Many of you have reached out looking for ways to support the Afghan refugees who will be relocating to our communities. Your sense of selfless-service and duty is why we are honored to serve this incredible population of Veterans, service members and families every day.

We recognize that VBH is not a refugee relief organization, and we aren't trying to be one. What we are is a locally connected, coordination and reintegration organization founded to serve the thousands of families who served in our military. As a country we have a duty to our Veterans and their families to ensure they continue to thrive after their service and sacrifice. Our team, our board, and our supporters believe that duty should be extended to our Afghan brothers and sisters who also answered the call.

Today several Veteran leaders met to draft an initial plan to organize volunteers and assess the local and regional capacity to address this emergent need. As a starting point, we are asking YOU, in this newsletter below, to identify the areas where you can be most helpful: volunteering with specific relief agencies, personal financial support, short-term housing support, material support, etc.

Right now no one knows exactly what is needed, so we are starting by creating a common operating picture to help align resources. By applying the same process we use for Veterans, our team is taking inventory of which agencies are willing to serve, what their eligibility criteria are, what services are available, and where the gaps in existing support exist.

Simultaneously, we are offering to work alongside the local, refugee relief agencies that are best equipped to lead this effort, by providing a compliment of wrap-around services, and by recruiting an organized and ready pool of auxiliary resources to surge on this growing need.

Gaps do exist. Our Team is working to identify them. With your help, we can BRIDGE them!

Want to volunteer? How something to offer? Let us know here