November 9, 2011 - The logo is simple and powerful: One soldier carrying another on his back.Christian Willard was in a hospital bed more than two years ago when he saw it, on a backpack that had just been given him after a grenade in Mosul, Iraq, severely damaged his right leg.
“It was a small thing, but when you see that symbol for the first time, that soldier carrying another soldier, it’s cool,” he said. “It feels really good to know that there are people there outside the military who are willing to help you out. It lets you know you’re finally home.”
That logo looms large on the Belfort Road building that houses the Wounded Warrior Project, a Jacksonville-based nonprofit group that in just a few years has grown into a major organization with national clout.
Through a variety of programs, the group aims to help injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make the transition to civilian life. It was founded in 2003 in Roanoke, Va. At first it had relatively modest aims: providing backpacks with comfort items — clothes, toiletries, playing cards — to hospitalized service members.
In 2006, the year it moved to Jacksonville, Wounded Warrior had 14 employees and spent $3.6 million on programs to help the injured. Final numbers aren’t in yet, but the group says that in the past year that spending has grown by at least 10 times that amount. read more>>>
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