WHEELING, W.Va. (WTRF) – West Virginia has one of the highest veteran homelessness populations in the nation with over 300 veterans being homeless in just this year alone.
At West Virginia Northern Community College in Wheeling, they are flipping that narrative and fighting for those who fought for us with their Veterans Stand Down event.
”West Virginia has such a high population of veterans that it’s something we should be proud of and we should be proud of serving them and making sure that we’re meeting their needs. So that’s part of what Northern is putting an emphasis on. We want to be involved in any efforts that are serving veterans and our population.”
Jenna Derrico – Special Populations Counselor, West Virginia Northern Community College
The last Veterans Stand Down event at West Virginia Northern Community College was in 2019, and the demand has been high in the last few years.
In partnership with Helping Heroes and the IC Group, West Virginia Northern Community College provided this resource fair for vendors to provide information on housing, healthcare, benefits, health screenings, and even haircuts to give back.
”At Helping Heroes, our main mission is to house veterans as quickly as possible, home veterans that are homeless. And one thing that people don’t understand about that is it comes with a lot of other things that we need to assist with, like helping people with health care, helping people just get connected to local services that they may not know exist. So, we definitely wanted to partner up with all of our local organizations to bring this event today for the veterans.”
Carly Polis – Housing Specialist/Healthcare Navigator, Helping Heroes
The goal of events like this is to make sure that students, staff, and the community know that they are not alone, and that help is out there no matter what the need is.
West Virginia Northern Community College has tons of veteran’s lunches and events coming up here in the next couple of weeks to continue their support for veterans here in our local area.
