Welcome Home will hold its second annual Casino Night Friday at the ELKS Lodge in Columbia.
The event will feature food, poker games, and stories from veterans. Welcome Home provides housing and support services to veterans in Mid-Missouri. Recently, the non-profit capacity grew after moving into a new facility on Business Loop 70.
Scott Buis, Welcome Home’s Outreach Director, said the new space allows it to serve more veterans.
“We can now serve female veterans, which we weren’t able to do before, we now are ADA compliant, as far as disabilities go, so we have two rooms that have shower accessibility,” Buis said.
The organization will also be able to keep families together.
“What I’m most excited about are the two family units. So if a family becomes homeless, this transition period is rough enough and in the past we would have to separate them, but now they can be sheltered together and go through the transition together,” Buis said.
Welcome Home currently houses 22 veterans and could hold up to 34 veterans and their families. Megan Sievers, Development Director for Welcome Home, added that the organization has an 80 percent success rate of moving veterans into independent living situations.
This year, all of the costs of running the event have been covered by local businesses and sponsors, which allows all of the money from ticket sales to go directly to the organization.
“Every individual that buys a ticket can feel pretty awesome that of their entire $50, 100 percent of that will go to the mission,” Sievers said.
Sievers said the capacity for the ELKS Lodge is 250 people and the organization has already sold almost 175 of those tickets.