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The Welcome Home Project Presents: Voices of Veterans, a public welcome home Ceremony at the Angus Bowmer Theater in Downtown Ashland Monday, May 26, Memorial Day. Doors open at 5:30pm Free to veterans. Everyone is welcome, a $15 donation is suggested but not required, though you must have a ticket to enter the theater. Not recommended for anyone under 14 yrs. (See Memorial Day Event)
The Welcome Home Project is a community centered welcome home program for veterans of foreign wars, in particular Iraq and Afghanistan, and their family members. The retreat will be five nights long, to be held at Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center outside of Ashland, OR (www.buckhornsprings.org), where the focus will be on creating a strong community of veterans and family members and encouraging expression and healing through story-telling, art, writing, meditation and movement. This part will be facilitated by Michael Meade (Vietnam era veteran), and Peggy Rubin, both renowned scholars of mythology, story telling, theater and ritual, who have been working with traumatized individuals and communities, including veterans, for many years (www.mosaicvoices.org, www.sacredtheater.org. See "about us" for more information on the staff.)
The final evening of this event, Memorial Day, 2008, will be a coming together of the veterans and the civilian public in a ceremony of re-connection and welcoming home, bridging the parallel worlds of veterans and those who do not know the experience of war. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has generously offered the use of the Angus Bowmer Theatre for this event, which invites the audience to listen and to bear witness to the stories of the veterans and families as presented in art, poetry and theater. This program is entitled, "Voices of Veterans". (Tickets for this event will go on sale in April, 2008)
We believe that most citizens, given the chance, want to support veterans and receive them back home. The public gathering allows citizens to become compassionate witnesses to the stories of war and return, and healing can happen when the burden of war can be shared by the larger community. We will involve the local community of S. Oregon in support of the veterans and their families and this will take several forms: broad publicity and outreach, participation in the form of donations of money, food, materials, time, etc. All expenses will be paid for the Vets and their families.
Additionally, we will document the event on film for wider public distribution so that many others will better understand both the difficulties faced by the men and women who have gone to war (which includes family members, of course) and the possibilities for support and healing provided by the larger civilian community.
To register, to volunteer, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please contact us! (Retreat space is limited and pre-registration is required)
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