The third North Iowa-Southern Minnesota Veterans Stand Down will be held Saturday, September 28th at the North Iowa Events Center in Mason City.
This one-day event is an opportunity for any veteran who is facing housing, food, clothing and financial insecurity or medical health challenges, to take a break from life’s battles and find resources from communities in North Iowa and Southern Minnesota.
The event was started by Peter Bieber who wanted to help the homeless veteran population in the area. Josh Davison, who is volunteering at the event, tells RadioOnTheGo News how the event can benefit veterans and their families.
“With his position as the Disabled Veteran Outreach Program Specialist with Iowa Works, he saw the need and we worked together to get it started. I believe last year we had over 500 veterans come in and right now we’re just looking for any veterans that are in need of pretty much anything right now. We may not have resources right there, but we can get you in contact with them if there’s something that you’re lacking, whether it’s food, housing, health care, even legal issues, but we’re going to have help for the veterans and then also I believe legal representation to give some advice and other events for them.”
Franklin County Veterans Affairs Director Adam Akers will also be volunteering during the event and says there will be plenty of resources available for veterans.
“It is a good program. There’s lots of information and lots of things for veterans to do there. Not only from what Josh says, I know there’s gonna be a dentist there, I believe a chiropractor, someone to cut hair that day, lots of different things, which is neat to see the North Iowa Southern Minnesota community come together in support of veterans that are either in need or just have those types of insecurities that they got housing today, but maybe they’re not sure about next month. They’ve got food today, but it’s an insecurity for next month maybe. And so those are the types of veterans that this is really geared towards.”
The event is Saturday beginning at 8:00 a.m. at the North Iowa Events Center in Mason City. For more information, you can visit operationgoldenhawk.com.
