Photo By Jarrod Vickers | Families attend the eighth annual “All is Calm, All is Bright” holiday event...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas - Joint Base San Antonio’s Exceptional Family Member Program and Hearts Apart held the eighth annual “All is Calm, All is Bright” holiday event on JBSA-Lackland to support all JBSA families with special needs members, deployed spouses, Gold Star families and Air Force Families Forever.
“[When this event started], we had supporters that wanted to do a Sensitive Santa event for our families who have children with special needs,” explained Marcia James, JBSA-Lackland EFMP family support coordinator. “We coordinated with Applied Behavior Analysis therapists, who are aware of children’s sensitivities, and they became our Santa Claus. From there, it just grew.”
The event has expanded from a Sensitive Santa meet and greet to include crafts, games, community resources and more to give families the opportunity to connect and have fun during the holiday season.
“We have the largest ‘Q-coded’ population in the Air Force here at JBSA,” James pointed out. “‘Q-coded’ means our active duty members have a family member with special needs and we need to do more checks and balances to ensure we’re offering them the proper support. That’s why we do this, it’s about quality of life. We want to bring people together to let them know they’re not alone.”
This year, JBSA’s EFMP hosted its most inclusive event yet by extending the invitation to a larger pool of local military families.
“We [co-host the event] with Hearts Apart, which is our program that services family members who are apart due to military obligation,” James said. “This year, we [invited] Air Force Families Forever and our Gold Star families.”
James was the first person to organize this event and said the community she serves continues to grow and develop into familiar faces.
“We have all these folks we’ve been servicing,” James said, excitedly. “I’ve been doing this since 2013, They call me a legacy provider. We’ve been doing it a long time and now have retirees that are in our programs. We take care of them! So they will never really leave us.”
For more information about the JBSA EFMP and Hearts Apart, visit https://www.jbsa.mil/Resources/Military-Family-Support/Military-Family-Readiness/.
For more information about Air Force Families Forever, visit https://www.afpc.af.mil/Military-and-Family/Air-Force-Families-Forever/
| Date Taken: | 12.15.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 12.29.2023 17:16 |
| Story ID: | 461075 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 55 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, JBSA Families Celebrate The Holidays Together, by Jarrod Vickers, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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