“The men and women who serve our Nation deserve our support — Today, Tomorrow, Always —” www.vanc.me
VANC Supporting the Community In partnership with The San Diego Food Bank, The Veterans Association of North County (VANC) and it’s member organization American Legion 760 along with Team Rubicon have found a new way to reach out to our active duty and veteran communities.
VANC
Welcome to June. If you look back on the last few months, it sure has been a roller coaster ride. We had the fear associated with this novel coronavirus, followed by the lockdown to flatten the curve, and then the realization that the models do not do an adequate job of preparing for the outcome. We are saddened by the loss of life. We are frustrated with the clear separation in our society that roughly half of us want to restart our economy and get back to living our lives and half who feel that the danger is not yet over and that we jeopardize their lives. And, while I hope we can all begin to heal as a country, I am also amazed at how life takes away one option and provides several others. We were disappointed to watch as the plans we made came apart. The Car show cancelled along with training classes, yoga classes, transition programs and hunter safety classes all stopped and have yet to re-start. But we also found ourselves in a position to help our soldiers and sailors, our airmen and marines in an entirely different way. 36
WWW.SanDiegoVeteransMagazine.com / JUNE 2020
Our first food distribution took place on April 10. It was raining so badly that a section of Highway 78 was closed due to flooding. On that day we served over 1000 active duty, veterans and their families in a no touch drive through food distribution. We had great participation from volunteers in rain gear and face masks setting up and distributing food. Our next event on May 8 was a beautiful sunny day and we were able to serve over 1800 service connected families. We are so pleased to be able to help in a small way to support our mission of being a one stop shop for military and community support. This latest project was never planned to allow us to continue our mission during covid and yet it does. We have a food distribution planned for every month in 2020. We hope to continue to provide food and friendship to our local military community as long as there is a need. I hope that all of this will end soon and we can get back to doing what we do in our building with events, activities and classes for our community. But it has been a blessing to us to find purpose in the stay at home world of Covid 19. We appreciate all of the support we have received from our community, our Association Members and partners like the San Diego Food bank. They helped us find purpose and meaning in an otherwise bleak situation. We hope you have all faired well through these last few months and look toward the future with hope.
