Georgia American Legion Post 84 serves as the manager for the Veterans Response Team, which is a collaboration to assist local veterans and their families.
When serving as a junior vice commander at American Legion Post 84 in Cornelia, Ga., Jim Morgan also was holding down a commander position at the local Disabled American Veterans chapter and senior vice commander at his Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Doing so, he was able to see firsthand the requests for assistance each entity received.
He also saw the bureaucracy required to provide the assistance, as well as a duplication of assistance efforts.
“Veterans or widows would come in and go through the process. People looking for food or help paying a bill,” Morgan said. “And each one we’d have to wait until a meeting night or get officers on the phone together and try to pull a vote out. And we noticed, not all the time, but some requests would hit each organization. And I said, ‘Man, there’s got to be an easier way.’”
That put Morgan on the path to finding what he said would be a more streamlined and faster way to provide assistance. And with that, the Veterans Response Team (VRT) was eventually established.
“I just tried to think of something where the process would be we could all work together to ensure a faster, more thorough response: the one phone number, one email concept,” Morgan said, noting another key component was pre-approved spending limits with a vetting process. “And I went out and sold it to all the organizations in the three counties.”
A collaboration between Post 84 and its American Legion Auxiliary unit, as well as American Legion Post 104 in Toccoa and two VFW posts, the VRT was launched in September of 2023. The program assists veterans, widows of veterans and the minor children of veterans in a variety of ways, including:
· Providing temporary shelter for up to two days;
· Providing food for one week;
· Funding minor emergency household repairs;
· Covering utility bills up to $200;
· Making referrals to county services;
· Connecting a veteran or widow with a service officer; and
· Providing transportation to medical appointments.
The program assists eligible veterans and their families in Habersham, Stephens and Rabun Counties and is managed by Post 84. Applicants seeking assistance can call or email the Veteran's Response Team, which uses the RingCentral phone system to respond promptly and efficiently.
Since the programs inception, there have been 43 requests that have resulted in financial assistance totaling more than $6,600. Eight other requests that didn’t require a financial expenditure – such as delivering food from a local food bank – also have been granted.
The VRT also stays busy providing transportation to medial appointments. A pool of drivers has driven more than 3,500 miles over the course of 82.25 hours. Those same drivers waited more than 100 hours while the medical appointments took place.
Toward the end of 2024, the VRT added a new component to its program: VRT PRESENTS, a monthly campaign dedicated to promoting mental and physical health awareness for veterans and their families. The program uses seminars, webinars, workshops and community events to provide education, resources and practical tools to help veterans improve their overall well-being.
The November session focused on suicide prevention and included a virtual presentation from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs licensed clinical social worker Georgia Gerrard on VA’s S.A.V.E. Training.
Morgan said the impetus behind VRT PRESENTS came after an area veteran experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder was killed during an encounter with law enforcement. Morgan was a member of the area’s honor guard and had to present the U.S. flag to the veteran’s daughter.
“I learned that law enforcement was at his residence numerous times leading up to this fatal incident,” Morgan said. “That started a push for mental health in the area. VRT PRESENTS was birthed out of that.”
For Morgan, seeing VRT going from concept to reality has him “blown away. You don’t create something and hope it fails, but when I started, I didn’t know it would stick. I was optimistic, but it was creating something out of nothing, which I really hard to do.”
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