VETERANS AID IN 2016

3 March 2017

Nine months ago we were first introduced to the team at Veterans Aid (VA) by Bloomberg Philanthropy, through the work our Managing Director was doing with Bloomberg through his involvement in the Goldmans Sachs 10,000 Small Business Programme. We have written before about the reasons we want to support the work VA does for ex-servicemen, but the figures just released about their work in 2016, re-enforces that decision for us:

In 2016 VA saw 411 new clients, provided 22,000 nights of accommodation, homed 154 veterans, put 35 through rehab, 45 into training & education and found jobs for (still counting!).

The charity submitted 107 visa applications on behalf of Foreign & Commonwealth ex-servicemen and women.

There were 35,535 recorded client interactions representing an investment of 10,632 hours of staff time.

VA is still spending an average of £2,500 per veteran on alcohol detox, £4,850 on opiate detox and a further £6,600 on residential rehabilitation.

There are Info-graphics illustrating these figures on their website under separate headings.

Our decision to work with VA in offering careers to their veterans has resulted in our meaningfully engagement with two of their veterans to date. Both individuals are earning huge amounts of plaudits from the clients who’s contract they are deployed to support. Indeed, one of their veterans was awarded GSS Superstar of the Month (employee of the month) in December 2016.

Having originally worked as Security Officers at a luxury residential housing development for our client Redrow Homes, we proactively collaborated with another of our clients, VSG (part of Compass Group), to accommodate both veterans with positions as Security Concierge after the Redrow Homes development contract was fulfilled in December 16.

Today, both veterans work to support VSG’s high profile retail security contracts at Selfridges and Sotheby’s in London and we are delighted to say that both have been praised by our client for their consistent levels of professionalism and diligence in fulfilling their duties.

The work VA does for the veterans in the UK is absolutely tangible and the passion the organisation has for supporting ex-servicemen and women is reciprocated by the deep levels of gratitude towards VA their beneficiaries exhibit in nearly all of our interactions with them.

We in turn, would like to express our gratitude to the team at VA for introducing us to two individuals who have been an absolute pleasure to work with since day one of our engagement with them.

We would also once again like to express our huge thanks to both Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs for their foresight in making the introduction that has made this partnership possible.