Georgia Vietnam Veterans Alliance

War Veterans Memorial Cemetery:

A major project we are working on is the creation of a War Veterans Memorial Cemetery on the north side of Atlanta. With over 200,000 veterans in Atlanta and many of them recahing their 70's we feel like there should be a final resting place for them that is affordable, is honorable, is next to their brothers and sisters and close to their families. We have met with all parties in the state will continue to do so until this becomes a reality.

Permanent Home for the Alliance

Although we currently have a very nice facility in VORC Inc., it's our hope that at some future point we can purchase and run our own facility. This would give us a permanent home as many of our vets have been wanderers all of their lives. It would also enable us to expand our museum by finding a permanent home for many of the items from the Vietnam and the Gulf War so that future generations might view them.

PLANNED PROJECTS

In the future, we hope to initiate several major projects, most of which are currently in the planning stage. We will continue to work on the Parade Association, work in our efforts at Outreach into the community and special needs where we can be beneficialto the well-being of veterans and their families. These include:

Concerts:

We are looking at providing a series of concerts called Salute to America which will benefit the Alliance and provide us seed money for the TV program and other projects, We are already at work with a promoter on this project and expect to hold the first concerts in the near future.

A Community Center for Veterans: Our vision for this Center will be to use what we have gleamed from working with the Homeless and veterans in transition. The center would be a facility where we could house at least a hundred veterans, provide job training, life training, counseling, and reorient the veterans to live in the community. We plan to have phones, laundry facilities, a kitchen where they could receive balanced meals, and medical assistance. Our goal would be to have a clean safe facility where a veteran or a family could move into, receive help and eventually get on their feet and live out the rest of their lives in a productive manner.

An Extended Care Facility

During the past year we have become increasing aware of the large number of veterans who are not able to care for themselves or need to live in a community where assistance is available on a long term basis. Nursing homes are very expensive and many veterans cannot afford this. This homes in Georgia that caters to veterans are full. It appears that Federal money will not be available in the future and we would like to fill that gap. This is a long term project and may take several years to fulfill.

VETERANS MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER

Every bit as ambitious as the Extended Care Facility is our thought that there is a pressing need for a VETERANS MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER. Our vision for this center would be a totally privately funded facility staffed by researchers, physicians, and other professionals who could diagnose, study and treat illness's related to wars and conflicts. This need has been apparent for 50 years. Over that period of time it is apparent that the Veterans Administration does not have the staff to devout to this effort. Our concept would be to concentrate on diagnosis and treatment, not on any compensation. We have veterans suffering from WWII and Atomic tests. With Vietnam, the Agent Orange problem surfaced and it is just now being partially understood. The Gulf War brought the illness;s associated with that conflict. In the future there will be other conflicts and US citizens will be infected with diseases that are unknown in the United States.

FUNDING

Everything we do today, and everything we plan for the future requires resources. Up will this point we have not gone to our members for launching nor have we received any grants from the government. We feel funding in the future will be even more difficult and we have a committee working on this now to examine every possible source of revenue that might be possible for us. It is our hope that much of our funding can be generated by us and hopefully by providing products and services that the public is already using. We will take the surplus and use them for our community, and the projects we have outlined above.