LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. — After serving his country, United States Military Veteran Ty Holmes came to Lackawanna County and started A Veteran's Vision to help the men and women from our area who also served their country.
Now, A Veteran's Vision is teaming up with one of our area's largest children's outreach programs to better serve those same men and women.
"Making sure they understand and comprehend. It's never a handout. It's a hand up and you served your country. Now, let us serve you." said Holmes.
Holmes and CHOP Out Hunger CEO Dani Ruhf announced the partnership between the two organizations earlier this week. The goal is to tackle food insecurity within the veteran population. This partnership comes at a time when according to the organizations, over nine percent of households receiving food assistance include a current or former member of the military.
"A large part of this community is veterans. Um The negative stigma that a lot of veterans have is they won't go to food pantries, they won't come to mobile distributions. It's just, it's a pride thing." said Holmes
"We started with kids and then we rolled into seniors and then the general community and we recognized that there's still a large pocket of people that we aren't serving. And that would be the veterans." said Ruhf.
Holmes' has more than 20 years of experience with veterans both active and retired.
Ruhf's organization that serves folks in more than 20 counties, the two say the collaboration makes reaching those in a need a reality.
"Veterans Vision was really one person. It was me. So, everyone thought it was a large organization, but a lot of the work that was done was people just volunteering, chop out hunger has manpower. They have the ability, the food access, the vehicles to really get out and positively affect the community." said Holmes.
"We have the logistics, and Ty has the vision and so just merging those together will allow us to take this so much further than either of us could alone." said Ruhf
The new partnership aims to start food outreach programs for veterans in the spring.