Uniformed and Help Hospitalized Veterans
We are so excited to be working with such an amazing organization as Help Hospitalized Veterans and our customers are proud to know a portion of each sale generated through our website is being donated to Help Hospitalized Veterans to assist & support their amazing efforts. Below is additional information about Help Hospitalized Veterans program. For additional information or to make a donation please visit www.hhv.org.
Help Hospitalized Veterans Mission
Help Hospitalized Veterans' primary mission is to provide patients receiving care at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers, military hospitals and state veterans homes with therapeutic arts & crafts activities. With a huge variety of different kits available, a patient is able to select one suited to his or her personal needs.
The kits help in keeping hands active and minds alert during days and sometimes even weeks of recuperation after surgery or rehabilitation. Arts and crafts kits along with other therapeutic products and services HHV provides and sponsors, come as a very welcome assurance to veteran patients that they have not been forgotten – that "someone out there really does care."
With increased demand for services placed upon the VA and military hospital systems, HHV continues to focus on its delivery of product and support to the veterans of past and present.
Therapeutic Arts & Crafts
From all reports by hospital directors, occupational therapists, nurses and the patients themselves, HHV's craft kits have done wonders to counteract the number one problem of every hospital – patient boredom, which manifests itself in endless hours of TV watching and daytime sleeping. By enabling patients to become involved in a satisfying, creative activity, the kits greatly improve patient morale, making them more responsive to treatment and easier to care for.
The challenge of completing the kits helps the patients to discover that they can again be useful, productive human beings.
Through the kits they regain a new sense of accomplishment and self-worth, which in many cases brings about a remarkable change in their whole state of mind.
By introducing veteran patients to arts and crafts, the program has given many of them, particularly the disabled, a meaningful hobby that they can continue to pursue and derive pleasure from for years to come.
History
Help Hospitalized Veterans (HHV) was founded in April 1971, about a year after a group of concerned San Diegans visited with several Marines who had been wounded in Vietnam while they were recuperating at the Balboa Naval Hospital. The Marines were asked, "How can we help you?" The answers varied from "Give me something to do with my hands," to "the seemingly endless hours of recuperation are often harder to take than combat."
Clearly, time seemed to weigh very heavily on them.
After numerous surveys and discussions with hospital clinicians and patients alike, the first arts & crafts kits were delivered. As soon as HHV staff saw all the smiling faces, they realized the kits had a tremendous therapeutic value. In some cases that value turned out to be a physical one—stringing together a leather kit could help hand-to-eye coordination and dexterity, while painting kits eased minds deeply scarred with memories of the battlefield. All that remained was whether or not the American people would be supportive of the program. And supportive they were. Today HHV's donors are the lifeblood of the program.
Because of such generosity, HHV has become the largest supplier of all arts and crafts kits utilized in VA and military hospitals. The kits are available—free of charge—to all VA and military facilities that care for our hospitalized veterans and active-duty military. These arts and crafts kits include scrapbook kits, leather crafts, suncatchers, paint-by-numbers, latch-hook rugs, poster art, plastic and wood models/crafts, and many more. Additionally HHV provides a variety of different products and services to homebound veterans, and cash support to many of VA's annual Special Events—the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival, National Veterans Golden Age Games, Valentines for Veterans concerts and more.
HHV neither seeks nor receives government funding. HHV is a service member of the Department of Veterans Affairs Voluntary Service (VAVS) as it provides Craft Care Specialists to VA and military hospitals nationwide.
Bob Hope presenting Vietnam veteran Eugene Gardner with HHV's one-millionth kit
