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Baumholder’s Army Emergency Relief fundraising campaign was launched March 4 during a breakfast gathering at the Heart of the Rock Dining Facility on Smith Barracks. Eldon Mullis, deputy director for administration at AER headquarters in Alexandria, Va., told service members and civilians at the breakfast that AER is not just for service members. AER also helps family members, retirees and other components of the Army, such as the National Guard.
In addition to emergency relief, AER also provides assistance in other areas, such as preventive maintenance for service members’ vehicles and scholarship grants for dependent children and spouses of active-duty service members.
“The best part is that it’s all interest free,” said Mullis, who was in Germany visiting installations and helping them kick off their fundraising campaigns. While here, he also assessed the impact and needs of the AER program in Germany.
The AER fundraising campaign provides everyone in the Army community an opportunity to help their fellow service members and community members. Baumholder’s AER fundraising campaign officer is Capt. Jason King. For more about contributing to AER, call King at 485-7383.
Immediately after visiting Baumholder, Mullis traveled to Landstuhl where he helped the medical community with their fundraising campaign kickoff.
“I learned something today,” said Lt. Col. Mike Sullivan, U.S. Army Garrison Baumholder commander, after Mullis spoke. “I did not know that I could send Soldiers or tell Soldiers that they can obtain AER assistance at any military installation, be it Army, Navy or Air Force.”
All U.S. military services have a financial assistance program like AER, and service members are eligible to receive assistance from them, just as other military services can receive assistance from the Army program.
Mary Johnston, Baumholder’s AER officer and financial readiness program manager, explained that last year, Baumholder had 224 assist cases for AER. Twelve percent of those cases were grants and the rest were interest-free loans.
Overall, Baumholder’s AER program provided almost $350,000 worth of assistance to Soldiers, family members and eligible civilians last year. The average amount of individual assistance was about $1,500, Johnston said.
Although there is no set amount of assistance that AER can provide, $1,500 is actually the referral limit that commanders can automatically approve for eligible service members and civilians.
AER representatives will soon be visiting the various agencies on post to provide contribution forms and answer questions.
