Community Appeal
How can you help bridge the historic gap between veterans, their families and residents in your local community?  

Call to Action
The Welcome tells the story of a poetry retreat for veterans who then shared their work at a sold-out gathering of the local community.

The Welcome Home Project can help your community:

•Come together to create significant welcome ceremonies so that veteran’s truths and traumas can be witnessed, heard and better understood by the local public.
•Enable communities of other veterans come together to share experiences and support one another in ways that no one else can, because they have been there.
•Provide a framework that helps vets create meaning from their experiences, whether through religious traditions, myths, the arts, rituals or the stories of other vets.
•Access other important programs around that country that support veterans and their families.

Bookmark this Organization
Auburn recommends The Welcome for more information on integration of veterans into local communities.

Synopsis and Purchase Information
The Welcome, 2011
The Welcome offers a fiercely intimate view of life after war: the fear, anger and isolation of post-traumatic stress that affects vets and family members alike. The film follows their gathering in a small room for an unusual five-day healing retreat, where participants bear witness to how the ruins of war can be transformed into the beauty of poetry. When this poetry is shared with a large civilian audience, the audience comes to understand that all are a vital piece of The Welcome as veterans try to find the way back home. Their examples of unflinching honesty, courage and love inspire the local community to once again realize their common humanity, always the first casualty of war.

Purchase Information
Want to purchase this film for your community and your congregation's lending library? Click here to learn how you can bring The Welcome to your religious community.