Summit County’s eighth annual Stand Down for homeless and displaced veterans, which offers a day of free services to the veterans, will be held 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Firestone Veteran of Foreign Wars Post 3383, 690 W. Waterloo Road, Akron.
Veterans must bring proper identification: VA card, discharge papers or dog tags.
Some of the free services offered that day include supportive services to help veterans with access to Veterans Administration health care, mental health and substance abuse counseling, eye and foot exams, dental exams, employment and social services and community legal aid.
Free bus service (Metro Bus 18) will be available to and from the Stand Down event.
Transportation to and from the shelters will also be provided by the Summit County Veterans Service Commission. The commission will add several other routes including pick up from the Veteran Service Commission offices at 1060 E. Waterloo Road.
“We will be there to talk to them about possibly seeking financial assistance and or filing a claim with the VA with our service officers,” said Larry Moore, director of the county veterans service commission. “This is an outreach mission to reach out to those veterans who are homeless or on the brink of possibly being homeless and seeing if we can get them in touch with resources to help prevent those kind of things. We want to help improve their situation and connect them to all the resources and benefits they are eligible for as veterans.”
Lunch will be served and food cards, clothes and comfort items (toiletries such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs and blankets) will be distributed.
Barbers and hair stylists will also be there to give free haircuts.
The Summit County Fiscal Office will be at the event to issue the new veteran identification cards. The plastic-covered wallet size identification cards can be carried more easily than DD 214 or discharge papers. This is the first time that the fiscal office will take the veteran identification card program into the community using portable technology.
“This program is beneficial to our veterans and it needs to be accessible to them,” said Fiscal Officer Kristen Scalise.
Her office will record the DD 214s remotely and print the cards on site. The $1 fee will be waived.
There might be some veterans who don’t know where their DD214s are, so the fiscal office will work with the Veteran’s Service Commission to assist in researching for the information.
“We are very fortunate in the Akron area, people come out of the woodwork to help and have been very generous,” said Laura Williams Dunlop, who chairs the event. “Everybody gives a little bit and it works.”
She said 3,000 people help from start to finish with the event to make it work and about 200 volunteers come on the day of the event to help.
“Many of the volunteers are veterans themselves, some of them take a vacation day to help walk the veterans through the system,” said Dunlop, who was an Army Women’s Army Corps.
“Our whole mission is to prepare our veterans for winter and to do what we can to help them with their struggles in life,” she said. “We will also have representatives from our court system to help with any legal matters.”
Summit County Veterans Council is sponsoring the event, which is being coordinated by the Veterans Service Organizations and Auxiliaries, Veterans Service Commission, Akron VA Clinic and Summit County Social Services.
Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.