Six years ago, a disabled veteran with a wife, children and a house contacted me about his one-time VA vehicle grant due to his 20-year-old truck just quit working. His 100% SC VA disability pay was just enough to cover his monthly bills, but he did not have enough left over to afford any type of new vehicle. I immediately reached out to several of the vehicle donation programs, to include the American Legion program, and I quickly found out that these programs are not in the business of donating a vehicle to a veteran, but rather were there to help raise funds for other programs.
Well, veterans need vehicles, whether disabled, homeless or with family that cannot afford a vehicle. Life out here in rural Georgia has many advantages, but any access to mass transit is not one of them. In order to get a good job, take your kids to school and go shopping, you have to own a vehicle.
As a result of this we created the Veteran Vehicle donation program, whereby veterans who meet the program criteria do in fact get vehicles. We established simple requirements for obtaining one of our donated vehicles, and they are: (1) be a disabled veteran who is 70% or higher SC disabled by VA, (2) Be a female or family with small children and who cannot afford to own a vehicle, or (3) Be a homeless veteran who demonstrates the desire and will to end their bout with homelessness and needs a vehicle to get a job that means the difference between a $70-per-hour job and lets them get a $20 or higher-per-hour job.
The following pictures are actually of the past 10 days where we have actually given three vehicles: one to a homeless family, the other to a disabled female veteran who cannot afford a vehicle, and the third to another disabled veteran who is studying to become a welder and needs the vehicle to get back and forth to Gwinnett Tech. I want to thank all those who have donated a gently used vehicle to the program and have helped a veteran take back part of their life.
This makes now a total of 51 vehicles we have donated to veterans in need.
