The Cherokee County Homeless Veteran Program, along with American Legion Auxiliary Unit 45, is pleased to announce that our partnership with Arrow Exterminators and the Georgia PestVets (3/16 Veteran Support Group) collected and distributed over 6,500 coats to homeless and low-income veterans, as well as others in need ahead of this winter’s cold weather.
"Last year, we collected and distributed nearly 5,300 coats on December 16, 2022, to various homeless and veteran organizations in North Georgia, including the VA homeless program, Cherokee County Homeless Veterans Program and several other veteran-focused organizations," noted Xavier Cugnon of Arrow Exterminators and head of the GA PestVets organization.
"This year, with the prospect of inflation and rising fuel costs, the need to support homeless veterans and other homeless who may not be veterans is at the top of our minds ahead of the coming cold months," added Jim Lindenmayer, director of Cherokee County Homeless Veterans program. "We hope the extreme cold weather that came to Georgia around Christmas last year will not return this year, but we are preparing in case it does."
Lindenmayer added, "This will be our ninth year of conducting a coat drive, and we would not be able to achieve our goals if it were not for our partnership with Arrow Exterminators, their local offices who help collect that many donated coats, and those in the community who donate much-needed coats to program like ours. Already, ahead of the launch of this program, we had requests for over 2,0000 coats from organizations we helped last year."
The coats were collected over a period of three months and on December 7, all of the coats and volunteers from the coat drive were sorted, packaged and picked up by the various veteran and community outreach programs to include providing 200 new coats to the VA homeless program of Atlanta, 1,600 coats to Atlanta Veteran outreach programs and coats for veterans and their families here in Cherokee County through our annual Adopt A Vet Program headed up by Betty Lewis, Commander of Auxiliary Unit 45 in Canton.
Cherokee County Homeless Veterans program is a subunit of American Legion Thomas M Brady Post 45 in Canton, Georgia.
