 We welcome you to the 2024 A.T. Army, the Area 3 Army Emergency Relief Campaign, takeoff. For more than eight years, A.R. has been a toddler through which soldiers provide financial support to their federal soldiers. The annual campaign starts today, and will run for three months and eight in May. A.R. is the only fundraised, authorized, Army-wide. The campaign's purpose is to fully inform 100% of all active community and retired soldiers and their family members to include spouses and children and deceased soldiers about the types of financial assistance available from A.R. and providing opportunity for soldiers to donate. This year's A.R. model is supporting soldiers and their families. Since 1942, the campaign runs from March 1st to May 15th. Last year, the Army raised over $80,000 in donations, with approximately $700. Our aim this year is to raise at least $100,000 and increase the number of dollars by 10%. We'd like to welcome Sergeant Pamela Funtana to the podium to share his experience with succeeding assistance with the Army Emergency Relief. I am Sergeant Funtana, formerly assigned to the 607th ASB 2K, and I also have many here that cannot believe that being grateful is one of the greatest talents that we as human beings can offer to someone who has helped us. Today, I have the joy of being in front of all of you and being able to tell you that I am that type of person, who is grateful with the Army Emergency Relief Program, all their staff, and especially with all your family. Thank you. She has been the kindest and most professional person to help me in my situation of receiving two loans, to pay for my family's immigration services, and finally, after many years, bring my family to the United States. Sometimes finding yourself in financial need, knowing that our program is offered by the U.S. Army, has a year-long and also had such professionals and dedicated people listening to you and finding the best way to help you believe in this presence. So, with all my heart, I hope that your program continues for many more years, reach your failures, who are going through a difficult time, and have that peace of mind that they can be helping at the end of the year. This is a small test of money from the side, but behind it, there is a lot of hard work and commitment from the entire Army to service staff. So, please, if everyone's welcome, I would love to offer a big round of applause for Paul. We'd like to welcome the proud parent of the Major General James Russo, a scholarship recipient, Major Paul Cunis and his wife Christina to the podium to share their experience with the Army Emergency Relief Scholarship Program for military children. Good morning. My name is Major Paul Cunis. Good morning to everyone's internal tailors. Many of you find that workers will help reach out to the units and raise money. We're so thankful that our son was smart enough to apply for an AER scholarship. Is that to help reduce the burden on us? As a high school student, there's a lot of things for them to think about. One of the things you could count on was going to AER and applying for a scholarship and having a straight-forward process that helped them not have a subjective essay or other things like that, but a very straight-forward process that was very simple for them to utilize and get assistance. So, it's like having your support and not losing it. The financial programs, AER program, ECS programs are out there for you to use. Take advantage of them. When you have an unexpected event or an expected event, they're there to support you. So, I hope that you look at these programs and take advantage of them. Thank you. I would like to welcome the 8th Army Command Sergeant Major, Robin Implemore, to the podium to speak on the importance of the AER program. Alright, I'll try to be quick. First of all, I want to thank the ECS and the AER team for putting this together and helping driving this. A lot of this campaign is going to be a success, and it's going to depend on what we already did in terms of preparation and training and getting everybody on orders and through training. So, I appreciate the team's efforts on that. I think this is an equal achievement. We've got the table set up here, we've got microphones, we've got listen music, we're going to have a good time. But having a team that needs it in the end. So, I would ask each section be in whatever type of organization during the set of goals for what you might have in terms of the number of participants. I think the Army's goal this year is 10%. Last year, they only did 6%. If you think about that, if you're in a company of 100 people, probably 6 people don't even have 100. That's not really good. So, I actually set an own personal goal within the organization to do this. I also thank the team here for coming and speaking openly about the fact that they use the services, they aren't just a real life example of that. So, again, thank you for being here. But this activity is not the achievement, the achievement for actually donating. So, thanks. For your testimonies. Really, for all of you today, our reps, thanks for attending today. But, again, this is like the stepping off point. This is the life of departure. This is LD. It's the difference that we make from now. So, my personal winning estimate is our soldiers and family members in Korea benefit about 10 to 1 for what we contribute. So, based on what we contributed last year of donating, we've probably got about 10 times back that. Of course, across the Army, I'll go across the Army, but numbers are relative to that. Over the last few years, not here, we've managed to exceed it here last year, and we've exceeded the Army average. Last year did like 47% of the people contribute. But last golf, the assistance cases there, so I think they realized it. We have a lot of assistance cases. But the remote was some assignment. It has to do with some financial things that come out. So, the Army, this is the Army's non-profit. It actually has a personal Army regulations for anything, right? But there's actually a regulation covering Army where this year leave. I shared with all the commanders the sort of do's and don'ts. But your obligation is to ensure that your team is informed. 100% informed. Which means they've got to be 100% contacted, right? But informed means that, like the Coons has talked about, you know, their child got scholarship. Sometimes we need, people need grants, they need loans, or they're scholarships. This is an opportunity to make sure that everybody understands what Army and emergency relief can do for you if you need assistance. But also that you're informed of your opportunity to contribute if that's the decision that you make. Of course, there's a lot of different ways to do it. You can do it, like Sergeant Major and I will do it with, you know, the pay roll deduction. You can do the automated online thing if you're the one that goes through the AFIS line. There's an opportunity there. So I would just ask, as we run through the campaign, I think we've already decided it's going to run through the middle of May, that you do ensure everybody's informed and understand the importance of it. Because honestly, while Sergeant Major and I had things, Sergeant Major and I had a thing with him about a week and a half ago, he's reaching out to the corporate America to give a thing to Tony. There's about 2,000 nonprofits or charitable organizations that do things to help military service members. But this is the only one that's dedicated solely to the Army and providing relief to soldiers and families. So I would ask that you ensure everybody's informed and that they have the opportunity to contribute. It can't be like, hey, if you want to contribute, come over here. We've got to do a better job. It's just like any training thing that you do. We do ensure that legitimate training that's done in a way that connects with people, like the testimonials make it real. And there's a lot of people in routines that have had the necessity to do it. They didn't want to talk about it in a big room. They didn't want to talk about it in small room or the necessity to receive assistance. So I would just ask that you go forward in the individual campaigns over the next two and a half months that you take it seriously and that you make a difference. This is about soldiers helping the soldiers. And like the SMA, the former SMA 16, like, you know, he hung up the boots, but he's still wearing his hat. It's pretty powerful and meaningful to me. We see that, you know, our former SMA is taking this home from the Army. It says a lot about his character. I think it also demonstrates an understanding that this is about soldiers helping soldiers, right? So thank you very much for attending. These are all fake hundred dollar bills that I put out. And they do not come as a donation, but really thanks to the entire AR team and all that you've done, not just to take our soldiers and families, but to assist us with the land. So that's that. Let's go ahead and move on to the final portion of our agenda. Now Lieutenant General Berthelsen and Command Sergeant Major Boulder will sign the 844-908-8R donation form and then proceed to the game.