The Veteran’s Association was founded by Marie Blackburn in Calgary back in 2019 out of her garage. From her home she started serving food hampers to CAF Veterans in need. Fast forward to 2025, there is now 4 locations (Calgary, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge) and we serve over 1500 clients on a yearly basis. The Association has branched out as well and now we have a pronged approach to tackling our mission. Our mission is to prevent homelessness, isolation, hunger and ultimately Veteran Suicide.
Our programs now include:
- Hamper Program – In Edmonton we serve over 225 CAF Veterans and currently serving members and their families with food on a monthly basis. The amount of food we give out varies on the family size but it is enough non-perishable food to last the family for a month. Because not all of clients have the same accesses, we provide each family with a gift card to walmart of either $150 or $200 to buy their perishable food items for the month.
- Emergency Veteran Assistance Costs (EVAC) – As we have expanded and our mission values grew, we discovered a need to help support our clients with out of the blue necessary bills in order to keep them living at home. A lot of the time our clients can support their monthly payments but out of the blue costs can be difficult to fund. We have money that we set aside to help support these claims. Here in Edmonton we help out roughly 100 clients on a yearly basis.
- Pet Care Promise – For a majority of Veterans, their pet is their support system. Their pet also helps them get out of bed and socialize. We wanted to support that so we introduced what is now called our Pet Promise Program. In Edmonton over half of our hampers we supply with pet food and over 60 clients utilize the money we have set aside to help fund Veterinary bills.
- Peer Support Groups – To help with isolation we partner with OSSIS to offer peer support for veterans as well as their partners. We also offer Tuesday veterans coffee every week in which we provide a safe free environment for social support
- VAC Support – We have dedicated volunteers that help both currently serving and veterans with there claims through Veterans Affairs
