Veterans - Come Camp with Us!
Background: Many Veterans have suffered injuries that now effects past family outing and camping. There is a need to assist camping families in continuing camping. Some may need just moral support, and some will require physical assistance in setting up and helping their children or spouse in camping.
It is a natural alignment with our organization to fill this need and help develop our membership to address the veterans’ originations with their area offering a unique support that FCRV can do. It will be an opportunity to grow the membership in a way that also involves the community in the club’s work.
Vision: Our chartered clubs establish a camping plan that works for their community to draw veterans into the club. Make available support to them with a National Point of Contact to help them work issues. Establish a connection with
the Various National Groups helping our Veterans such as Wounded Warriors, DAV, American Legion, and many others. Develop a “go by” or protocol to help the clubs in local plans to reach out.
We believe that this will develop into a nationwide membership strong enough to have a National FCRV Veterans Group which will increase membership and exposure to our American and Canada clubs.
ESTABLISHMENT OF A VETERANS MEMORIAL FUND
The Veterans Program has created a Memorial Fund with a loving donation from Pam Likins as a memorial to her husband Dick. Both were our Retiree Program Directors for many years. Dick was always supportive of the Veterans, he served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.
The memorial fund was established to support the FCRV Veterans Program in developing veterans camping experiences, enabling our Veterans to see local programs at places we camp.
“Where strangers become friends and friends become family”
One of the goals is to unite veterans throughout FCRV and to encourage veterans to participate in FCRV camping throughout our Chartered Chapters. We believe many veterans have stopped camping when service sent them away on deployments and/or possibility due to injuries and may no longer feel camping is an option. Hopefully our members can assist new perspective Veteran members to return or start camping together.
For the past three years our Veteran Membership has been working to visit and educate themselves on local veteran efforts in the communities where we camp. This helps them to understand different programs and can take some of the good ideas back home and maybe assist their own programs at home.
This Memorial Fund is available to all that would like to make a Memorial Gift at any time. It will be used in support of the FCRV Veterans Program. All offerings are truly welcome.
Contact
George Reynolds (fcrcsoutheastregion@gmail.com) for any information regarding the Veterans Outreach Program or the Veterans Memorial Fund.
