The military members and the veterans around the Pine Belt are being asked to join a convoy on Wednesday, Oct. 7, to celebrate the annual health and benefits fair in a different celebration.
Grace’s Home of Heroes is teaming with the Pine Belt Veterans Task Force to host the 2020 Health and Benefits Convoy for Military Members and Veterans from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Oct. 7 at The Train Depot at 308 Thomas St. in Hattiesburg.
“After working hard to develop the health fair, the health situation shifted everything around,” said Amber Travis, Grace’s Home founder, of Hattiesburg. Travis honored her grandmother by establishing and building a program to take care of military personnel. The convoy will be something new.
“In the beginning, we were trying to do a physical health fair,” she said. “We would have our vendors set up and bring the materials. Things are just so back and forth with the pandemic.
“COVID-19 can have an impact on older veterans, so the convoy is designed to step in and help,” Travis said.
“A lot of our potential vendors were like, ‘Oh, well, we can’t travel. We’re restricted to this and that,’” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, gosh, we’re probably gonna have to cancel.’ But then we’re partnering with the Pine Belt Veterans Task Force, so I kind of threw that idea out to them. We came up with a drive through event, so we decided to name it ‘The Convoy’ for the military purposes.”
Of course, Travis said she wanted to have a physical health fair to have the military personnel go through the activities. That won’t be available.
“As far as providing what we’re gonna do is we’ve been reaching out to all of our potential vendors,” she said. “They are all military organizations, so we have different contacts that range from the Veterans Administration to U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo’s office to other local nonprofit veteran organizations. So we’ve reached out to them.”
Other groups that are available are home health services to get information brochures and pamphlets that they have, or they could have stress balls, pins, just about anything that they have to put in bags.
“All of that information will be given out in 250 bags,” Travis said. “Then we’re also going to have a postcard where the postage is prepaid so they can send it back to us at no cost. If there’s something in the bag that they need more information on, or if they need additional resources, they’ll be able to fill out that card and send it back to us. We’ll be able to contact them to help them with any additional resources that they need.”
Travis said the first 25 participants will receive bags with gift cards to places around town, and then The Convoy will hold a grand prize raffle. Participants can attend the drive-through health fair if they come from any Pine Belt county, she said.