On Sunday August 25th the Montachusett Veterans Outreach Center hosted the 6th Annual Jesse H. Stallings Speaker Series. This year’s speaker series, featuring guest speaker Ricky Bland and musician Kali Imari-Stoddard, was a great success. With help from local businesses and organizations over $15,000 was raised for the MVOC, of which 100% will be put towards supporting our veterans.
This year’s speaker, Ricky Bland, was the first Navy veteran to be featured in the series. Ricky served honorably for 28 years and passionately spoke to our veterans about reintegration to civilian life, feeling proud of their time and the services, and fighting for the benefits they earned in service to this country.
You can hear some snippets of Ricky’s speech HERE and HERE.
Returning to the speaker series for the second year in a row was musician Kali Stoddard-Imari, aka Kali Loops. Kali dedicated his entire weekend to supporting our veterans, spending Saturday at an all day music festival fundraising for the New England Center and Home for veterans, and then scooting over to Gardner Sunday night to provide entertainment for our local veterans.
Thank you to our sponsors for supporting MVOC and keeping this event free and open to the public year after year:
- Advanced Cable Ties
- Anthony’s Liquor Mart
- Chair City Oil
- Fidelity Bank
- Harvard Street Health Care
- Heart of a Hero Foundation
- inConcert Web Solutions
- Mount Wachusett Community College
- Padgett Business Services
- Parker Glass
- Piper Electric
- Rollstone Bank
- Thermalogic Corporation
- Wachusett Mountain Ski Area
- White Mountain IT
We also thank and appreciate Gardner Elks Lodge #1426 for donating their space for this event, and the Montachusett Suicide Prevention Task Force for contributing refreshments to the event.
We are already looking forward to next year’s event!