Easily visible in a bright yellow Valor T-Shirt, Mike Meining sat at the entrance to Kirby Park surrounded by boxes of clothes, shoes and toiletry kits available to veterans for free.
“We call it a 'stand down,'” he said. “That’s military jargon for when the troops come in from the field and they take showers, rest up … to get ready to redeploy.”
Meining is a veteran outreach coordinator with the Valor Clinic, one of the veteran-focused organizations at the Wilkes-Barre VA’s annual Chaleng Summit on Thursday.
The summit, in its 32nd year, is an annual gathering organized by the Wilkes-Barre VA to allow veterans to connect with multiple resources in one place.
This year’s summit focused on outreach to veterans experiencing homelessness. Shannon McLafferty, homeless coordinator with the Wilkes-Barre VA, said they chose Kirby Park for this year’s summit in the hope of reaching unhoused veterans where they might already be.
“We do a point-in-time count in January where we go and … engage unsheltered veterans to get a number, to get a count of our area,” she said. “Kirby Park is actually one of the areas that we come to … so we thought this was going to be a great location and the weather turned out beautiful.”
VA programs like Medical Foster Homes set up booths alongside community organizations the VA works with such as the Commission on Economic Opportunity and the Wilkes-Barre Housing Authority.
VA staff and volunteers gave out lunches, drinks and other items as people — many of them VA patients already — wandered through the pavilion at Kirby Park.
McLafferty said the Chaleng Summit helps the VA learn more about the needs of veterans in the area. When a veteran comes to the summit, they complete a survey to let the VA know what challenges they are facing.
“In years past, that’s how our dental program for homeless veterans got started,” McLafferty said.
In recent years, housing has become a top issue.
“We’re always in need of affordable housing,” McLafferty said.
At the park entrance, Chris Young and Maurice Fowler perused the boxes of clothes set up by Valor.
Fowler is a veteran and a resident at Orangeville Manor, a personal care home in Columbia County that the Wilkes-Barre VA works with to house veterans.
Young, an employee of the home, said the residents were invited to the summit and traveled together in a van. He said it’s important to have all of the VA and community resources in one place rather than only connecting over the phone or email.
“You have to make phone call after phone call and it becomes phone tag,” he said. “Once they’re all in one spot, if they have questions, they can just go around and get them all (answered) right here. They need more of this.”
Young stocked up on clothes for a few residents who couldn’t make it on Thursday. Fowler picked out a few new T-shirts from the boxes.
“I was interested in some of the stuff that they have going on for veterans,” Fowler said. “They can give you help with getting housing.”
