It’s a community center that’s been a part of Ventura County for decades.
A pair of buildings off of Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley has been home to a Veterans of Foreign Wars Post for more than three decades. VFW Post 10049 has helped the community for decades, doing everything from handing out scholarships for young adults, to helping veterans in need. But now, the VFW needs some help itself.
VFW Post Commander Wayne Wright says between the needed repairs, and other bills, they need to raise $50,000 to keep their doors open.
The post reached out to ask a local university for help. A group of MBA students at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks agreed to take on the project of helping the veterans come up with a plan to get the post back on track.
Sumantra Sengupta, Director of CLU’s MBA program, says the students would get some real world experience through their Capstone project.
The VFW doesn’t have a mortgage at this point, but it also doesn’t have a lot of revenue. While the post has about 240 members on paper, only about 50 are active, with old age catching up with many of them. The report says the goals should include raising the $50,000 dollars needed short term to make essential repairs, and pay bills. But, it also calls for using social media to try to attract new, younger members. The students say the post should look for local corporate sponsors. And, it calls for the post to consolidate operations with the military museum it runs at the Simi Valley Town Center, which is almost being run as a separate entity.
Members of the post say they’ve served their country in uniform, and the post has been provided programs for the community for decades. Now, they are hoping people will step up to help the troubled post.
Link to VFW Post 10049 GoFundMe Page: www.gofundme.com/help-vfw-veterans-restore-post10049
