DAV Magazine — January/February 2018
Crossing the threshold into 2018
Welcome to the new year! I certainly hope you all had enjoyable holidays spent in the company of family and good friends.
As we stand looking at the months to come, I am excited by a number of initiatives DAV plans to launch and the advocacy campaigns we will continue to champion. Each year, we seem to grow in drive and energy, and that is in no small part fueled by those of you making our chapters and departments thrive.
Your input—and moreover, your commitment to executing tasks critical to serving veterans—has helped us to develop a new platform to help drive our voluntary services efforts in a new and innovative way. We know many people across the nation want to pitch in and help, and we are developing technological solutions to make the process of volunteering much easier.
DAV’s Volunteer for Veterans—easy to find online at volunteerforveterans.org— will match volunteers with local volunteer opportunities, relying on the public, chapters and departments to identify needs to assist veterans within local communities. For our members, it will make recruiting volunteers much more efficient; for prospective volunteers, it will make identifying volunteer opportunities far easier. This tool should come in handy as we, once again, promote our Forward March campaign throughout the month of March, encouraging members, supporters and all those who have been helped by DAV to give one hour of service through our Local Veterans Assistance Program.
On the service front, we hope to soon unveil a new online site— BenefitsQuestions.org—to help veterans and family members better understand the benefits and programs available to them and how to apply. Teams are hard at work right now preparing this tool to help serve as an online question databank that will both inform and empower veterans when it comes to the complex system of veterans benefits.
We made great strides throughout 2017 in our advocacy work, particularly winning a major victory with appeals modernization and making terrific headway with caregiver expansion legislation. But we have much ahead of us.
Our Benefits Protection Teams and leaders will have their hands full as we continue to fight for sensible reforms to veterans health care. This battle is critical to ensuring veterans will have access to the care they need, when and where they need it—all while strengthening, not dismantling, the VA system.
And of course, women veterans remain a top priority for DAV in 2018 as we fight to equalize the care and benefits they receive and ensure they have access to the gender-specific care they require.
Great things are on the horizon this year, and we will need the help of our membership to continue moving forward. Thank you for all you do, and I look forward to continuing to work alongside you.
As we stand looking at the months to come, I am excited by a number of initiatives DAV plans to launch and the advocacy campaigns we will continue to champion. Each year, we seem to grow in drive and energy, and that is in no small part fueled by those of you making our chapters and departments thrive.
Your input—and moreover, your commitment to executing tasks critical to serving veterans—has helped us to develop a new platform to help drive our voluntary services efforts in a new and innovative way. We know many people across the nation want to pitch in and help, and we are developing technological solutions to make the process of volunteering much easier.
DAV’s Volunteer for Veterans—easy to find online at volunteerforveterans.org— will match volunteers with local volunteer opportunities, relying on the public, chapters and departments to identify needs to assist veterans within local communities. For our members, it will make recruiting volunteers much more efficient; for prospective volunteers, it will make identifying volunteer opportunities far easier. This tool should come in handy as we, once again, promote our Forward March campaign throughout the month of March, encouraging members, supporters and all those who have been helped by DAV to give one hour of service through our Local Veterans Assistance Program.
On the service front, we hope to soon unveil a new online site— BenefitsQuestions.org—to help veterans and family members better understand the benefits and programs available to them and how to apply. Teams are hard at work right now preparing this tool to help serve as an online question databank that will both inform and empower veterans when it comes to the complex system of veterans benefits.
We made great strides throughout 2017 in our advocacy work, particularly winning a major victory with appeals modernization and making terrific headway with caregiver expansion legislation. But we have much ahead of us.
Our Benefits Protection Teams and leaders will have their hands full as we continue to fight for sensible reforms to veterans health care. This battle is critical to ensuring veterans will have access to the care they need, when and where they need it—all while strengthening, not dismantling, the VA system.
And of course, women veterans remain a top priority for DAV in 2018 as we fight to equalize the care and benefits they receive and ensure they have access to the gender-specific care they require.
Great things are on the horizon this year, and we will need the help of our membership to continue moving forward. Thank you for all you do, and I look forward to continuing to work alongside you.
Message