2021 Summarizing report – on December 15 “Wounded Warrior Support Foundation” held the charity gala dinner and presented the results of its activities to society
Guests gathered on the traditional pre-Christmas charity dinner were welcomed by founder of the WWSF, George Ramishvili. He thanked everyone for attending the event. Co-founder and CEO of the foundation, David Mamulaishvili presented 2021 activities of the fund and shared several stories of the wounded warriors, who were heavily wounded during 2008 war. These warriors had undergone serious surgeries abroad with the support of WWSF. During 2021 WWSF financed 81 wounded military servicemen and veterans with 437K GEL for the following needs: surgeries, medicines, medical treatments, fitting of homes for those with the special needs, professional re-trainings, medical treatments of underage children of wounded warriors, etc.
Several companies made donations during the charity gala dinner. This event was a different one in terms of the number of supporters locally as well as abroad. The US company “Silk Road Wines”, supporting American veterans, was one of the donors. The latter had organized the charity dinner in September in Orlando, Florida and shared part of the raised funds with WWSF. The co-founders of the company Barry Greer and Yanick Arakelov arrived from US specially for attending the event and granting the check with the amount of 77 750 GEL to the management of WWSF. The total donations collected from Georgian and foreign companies made almost 350K GEL. This amount in addition with Silknet’s 300K annual commitment will be spent for the needs of wounded warriors and their underage children in 2022.
The charity event was attended by diplomatic corpus as well as representatives of NATO, members of ODC, wounded warriors, representatives of business and different sphere of society. Fund supporters and board members from USA joined the gathered guests through video connection: former United States army officer Wesley Clark, US congressman Joe Wilson, honorray member of WWSF board, former US Navy Officer and honorable counsel of Georgia in South Carolina, David Shimp, Ph.D. , Barbara Van Dahlen, Ph.D. and Randy Phelps, Ph.D.
Barbara Van Dahlen and Randy Phelps joined the fund as co-chairs of Advisory Board. They have been supporters of the WWSF from the early times of its foundation. Named to TIME magazine's 2012 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Barbara Van Dahlen, Ph.D. is also the Founder of Give an Hour® www.giveanhour.org a national nonprofit organization that provides free mental health care to those in need including service members, veterans and their families. She is an expert on the psychological impact of war and a thought leader in mobilizing constituencies to create large system change in the mental health sector. Barbara Van Dahlen, Ph.D. is widely recognized for her work in changing the culture associated with mental health in order to remove barriers and increase access to care.
The valuable experience of the newly formed advisory board co-chairs is priceless for the fund. These people expressed their goodwill to support the WWSF with popularizing it in US society, raising donations and giving consultancy.
Such high level of support speaks of the reputation and credibility of the fund. This, in its turn, means that Georgia’s wounded warriors will get a wider support from WWSF. This will enable the fund to do more in cooperation with Ministry of Defense of Georgia and State Service of Veterans’ Affairs of Georgia.
On the event speeches were made traditionally by H.E. US Ambassador, Minister of Defense, as well as NATO Military Liaison Officer. In their speeches they underlined the great contribution of wounded warriors, mentioning that crediting and caring for these heroes is one of the priorities and WWSF has a special role in it.
The fund aims to show a good example of cooperation between business and government. Founder of WWSF, Silknet and its management suggested other companies to join them in this initiative and take the activities of the fund on the wider scale. Purpose of the fund is to support those, who defended their country and scarified their health to motherland. This is the value, we have to get united around – this was the main message of WWSF.
