Greetings,

I think you’ll like this… a US Special Forces soldier just became a Spirit of America donor. In our online donations, people can leave a comment. We saw this comment come through with a donation:

“the speed Spirit of America can operate at is unmatched, and their impact is tremendous just when we needed to earn trust with locals while trying to achieve national objectives.”

We wondered, “who’s that?” Turns out it is a Special Forces soldier who served in Syria and was involved with one of our projects there. Our Director of Communications, Lauren Pauer, reached out to ask him more about his experience with Spirit of America. Here’s what he wrote to her:

“During the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, our partner force in Syria did not have any PPE (personal protective equipment) to protect themselves from COVID-19 transmission. As you may recall, worldwide supplies of COVID-19 PPE (such as masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, etc.) were very low, and our US forces were limited in what we could share with the partner force. The partner force’s concern was if they couldn’t protect their members from COVID-19, they couldn’t continue to fight against the remnants of Da’esh (ISIS) in eastern Syria.

“Spirit of America came to the rescue, rapidly procuring masks, protective gowns, gloves, and sanitizer on the local economy and disseminating this much-needed PPE to the partner force so they could continue working with US forces to defeat Da’esh. It was a powerful example of how quickly Spirit of America can act – and it left a lasting impression on our Special Forces unit. We were proud that an organization like Spirit of America could make an immediate impact on behalf of our partner force’s safety that enabled us to continue our mission with them to defeat the remnants of Da’esh (ISIS) and support US national objectives in eastern Syria.”

As you know, tomorrow is Veterans Day. Our great thanks to all who have served in uniform and those who are serving now. We know that freedom isn’t free.

Jim Hake
Chief Executive Officer