Encouraging Veterans

We have delivered Cheeriodicals to well over a dozen VA Medical Centers and, like Children’s Hospitals, all VA Hospitals are different but alike in many ways. When we walk in with hundreds of big green boxes designed specifically to thank Veterans for their service to our country we know what to expect in general but we get surprised too.

I’ve been asked many questions by Veterans as I walked in their hospital rooms with a big green box. “What do you want?” “How much does it cost?” “Any whiskey in there?” You can imagine. But I was never more surprised than when a Vietnam Veteran told me that no one had ever thanked him for his service. All I could say was, “well, you’ve been thanked now.”

The Veterans we’ve met all have stories – some of them war stories but all them stories of struggle. After all, they’re in the hospital. Our Veterans Cheeriodical is specifically designed to say “thank you” and to give us a reason to enter their lives for a moment with a much-needed expression of encouragement. We facilitate this experience for our clients too.

We have taken groups as large as 30 into VA Medical Centers. These groups are always part of the larger team who assembled the boxes but they get the added bonus of seeing a Veteran’s reaction when the box is opened.

Working with Voluntary Services

There are nearly 200 VA Medical Centers across the country and each one is in need of volunteers to help care for and honor the Veterans they serve. These volunteer efforts are coordinated by the men and women of Voluntary Services. This is a special office within the VA (called the VAVS) that organizes all kinds of special events for Veterans receiving care through the VA Healthcare System.

Medical staff care for the physical needs of Veterans but the VAVS team provide activities that directly and indirectly care for the social and emotional wellbeing of Veterans. That’s how our team building events and Veterans gift boxes align with one of the major goals of Voluntary Services.

We work with VAVS to maintain volunteer/ Veteran interactions, fostering the healing process

There’s almost no end to how companies can work with us to thank and encourage our nation’s Veterans. The simplicity of a thank you gift, in a big green box, assembled by a corporate team should not be understated. When a Veteran has never received a “thank you” for his or her service, that box means more than we know.