Thanks to a $2,000 Beacon grant from the National Elks Foundation, the local lodge offers a new \u201cfood backpack program\u201d to Montezuma County veterans. Every second and fourth Saturday of the month, veterans can stop by the Cortez Elks Lodge and pick up a backpack stuffed with nonperishable goods and items like shaving kits and over-the-counter medicines for free.<\/p>\n
Items include canned meat, jerky, tuna, chips, fruit cups, canned veggies, crackers, shaving kits and aspirin, said Kerry Mayhew, leading knight of the Cortez Elks Lodge.<\/p>\n
The program was started after the Elks learned about veterans\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been informed that there are at least 30 vets in the county that were disabled or homeless and in need of help. We have other veterans programs and are a pro-veteran organization and thought this would be a great new way to show our support,\u201d said Mayhew.<\/p>\n
The backpacks were donated by Southwest Colorado Community College, and much is the food is being purchased at-cost at Dolores Food Mart, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community has been very helpful in getting this off the ground, now we just hope more veterans find out about the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be eligible for a backpack, veterans need to bring their DD-214 card (proof of disability and discharge). The next backpack giveaway is Sept. 12. For information, contact Kerry Mayhew at 970-903-4879.<\/p>\n
The Cortez Elks Lodge is at 2100 N. Dolores Road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
to a $2,000 Beacon grant from the National Elks Foundation, the local lodge offers a new \u201cfood backpack program\u201d to Montezuma County veterans. Every second and fourth Saturday of the month, veterans can stop by the Cortez Elks Lodge and pick up a backpack stuffed with nonperishable goods and items like shaving kits and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5843],"tags":[408,21,184],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living","tag-charity","tag-cortez","tag-veterans-affairs"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109979"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}