Volunteering & Civic Engagement

Coffee Socials for Veterans & Families

BIPOC Community Events

LGBTQ Community Events

Vets4Warriors 24/7 Confidential Peer Support

Vets4Warriors is a 24/7 peer support program that offers confidential support and resources to the military and veteran community, including every active-duty military service members and National Guard and Reserve service members, as well as Veterans of every generation and their family members and caregivers.

Veterans’ Posts & Auxiliaries in Massachusetts

There are nearly 600 different veterans posts and chapters of national Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) in Massachusetts. The directory includes information about most posts in Massachusetts all in one place (American Legion, VFW, DAV, VVA, AMVETS, etc).

VA VetResources Community Network

The VA Veteran Experience Office’s VetResources Community Network (VRCN) is VA’s front door for outreach and community engagement focused on co-designing collaboration strategies, bridging gaps in service, maximizing collective impact, and breaking down silos. 

VRCN has a community of practice, Employer Collaborative, and Gaming Partner War Room. The Veterans Collaborative is part of the VRCN Community of Practice. State and federal agencies, nonprofits, Veterans Service Organizations, partners, coalitions, peer networks, and local Community Veteran Engagement Boards can request to join.

IVMF Community of Practice

The Institute for Veterans & Military Families Community of Practice (CoP) is a learning network dedicated to sharing insights and best practices among service providers to raise the level of quality, transparency, and accountable service delivery while building upon providers’ professional competencies to serve clients and build capacity. Veterans Collaborative is part of IVMF’s CoP.

Champions Network

Commit to Connect Champions are a national network of passionate leaders and innovators at the local, state and national level dedicated to ending social isolation and loneliness. Champions work together to connect people to social connection programs and technologies and create more socially connected communities inclusive of older adults, people with disabilities, and caregivers.

• To join the network, submit the application. You’ll receive an email confirming receipt. Once approved and processed, you’ll will receive an email with access to the online network hub.

• Ongoing engagement is encouraged, but the amount of time dedicated to this initiative is dependent on each Champion in the network.

• This program is administered by USAging, the national association representing and supporting Area Agencies on Aging. 

Community-Based Suicide Prevention Strategies

CDC’s Strategies for Communities support a public health approach to suicide prevention that implements and evaluates multiple prevention strategies to enhance resilience and improve well-being based on the best available evidence and works to prevent people from becoming suicidal. A core part of the strategy includes engaging community members in shared activities and promoting healthy peer norms.

In November 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a Call to Action to catalyze community-level efforts to build cross-sector partnerships to “develop well-coordinated systems of health and social care to better address social needs that can impact health.”

The Call to Action is a companion to the U.S. Playbook to Address Social Determinants of Health and highlights the role of community care hubs in facilitating community-based partnerships across sectors in order to develop and sustain the community-based infrastructure that is necessary to improve coordination between health and social care providers.

Community Building & Outreach Summits

Key Topics

• Outreach and opportunities to find, engage, and build a renewed sense of purpose among service members, veterans, and their families in their local community and beyond

• Using the shared calendar, resource trackers, information, directories, and slack to increase efficiency and effectiveness of outreach efforts

• Retaining volunteers and organizers and providing opportunities for service members, veterans, and their families to lead in the community and give back

• Promoting existing initiatives, programs, and projects that sustain involvement and connections among organizations working to build supportive communities

• Submitting events to the shared calendar using the tag #community and other tags so they appear above and on relevant resource or regional pages (ie, #fellowship, #retreat, #gaming, #writing, #volunteering, #LGBTQ+, #BIPOC).

• Sharing the benefits of connecting to outside services to address the need for purpose and social support to individual service providers and government agencies

• Building trust and relationships among service providers to support our collective capacity to make warm-handovers (not a phone number or URL), support a “no wrong door” approach to services, and respond early to unmet needs

• Ensuring the perspectives of service providers and peers with lived experience are heard and guide our work

• Making the fragmented and siloed array of locally available services, support, and communities accessible and visible to the military and veteran community in Massachusetts

• Supporting the emergence of a national network with the capacity to increase coordination, cooperation, and cross-sector collaboration

Resource Tracker