Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


Area veterans can enjoy a day of camaraderie and learn about a wide variety of veteran-specific resources during a big event this weekend.

Vet Fest will take place this Saturday from noon to 4pm at the Fowlerville Fairgrounds. Vet Fest is a free event for all active duty, retired, or military veteran families.

It’s family-oriented and veteran’s family members can enjoy food trucks, bounce houses, live bands, backpack and school supply giveaways, celebrity appearances, and more. All veterans in attendance will also be entered into drawings to win a wide variety of prizes valued from $300 to $2,000.

Vet Fest aims to bring veterans together to enjoy camaraderie and connect them to the military benefits they earned through their service. It’s put on by the veteran nonprofit VETLIFE and brings the veteran community what’s dubbed the largest free veteran event in the state.

VETLIFE Co-Founder Joshua Parish tells WHMI the primary objective of the event is to connect veterans to their benefits, noting that Michigan is home to almost 600,000 veterans but in 2019 less than 12% were connected to a federal benefit. He says those include things such as VA home loans, VA healthcare, potential disability compensation, education assistance, burial benefits and emergency assistance.

Parish says most veterans have no idea where to go to how to access potential benefits. While it’s cool they have all of the activities and prizes at Vet Fest, Parish says what he is most proud of is all of the vetted resource providers at the event. He says they personally vet all of the organizations that will be in attendance – adding unfortunately there are a lot of organizations in Michigan that take advantage of veterans and he “sees it every single day”.

Registration is required for the event and veterans will be asked to show their military-designated ID at check-in.

More information and a link to register are available in the attached release.