How Van Metre Gives Back to the Community

Explore Van Metre's decades-long history of giving back to the local community as Ernie Kyger, Van Metre's Lifestyle Expert, speaks with Jeannie Van Metre and Dr. Mary D'Onofrio about the Van Metre 5K Run and Kristyn Burr about Home-Aid Northern Virginia.

Key takeaways:

• The Van Metre Companies has a history decades-long of giving back to the community with efforts through the Van Metre Companies Foundation, the Van Metre Family Foundation, Capital Hospice, and many local schools.

• For almost three decades, the Van Metre 5K Run has raised millions of dollars for the Children's National Health System, formerly known as Children's Hospital. Even the pandemic could not stop us from adding many hundreds of thousands of badly needed dollars to that total.

• The idea to become involved with Children's came from Rick Rabil, the President and CEO of Van Metre Companies. Rick launched the event in 1992 to raise money in support of Children's as thanks for the excellent treatment his son received from the hospital.

• The course is certified and we provide microchipped tags. Everything is very technical when the course is completed in person, making it easy to time people when they're running. A mix of people participate: some are very competitive runners, but there are also casual joggers and walkers.

• About 125 to 150 trade partners and sponsors donate and support the Van Metre 5K, benefitting Children's National.

• The Van Metre Companies have been amazing in supporting cardiology. They built a cardiac operating room, helped raise funds for a chair in cardiology, and helped raise funds to benefit the Professorship in Fetal Cardiology.

• Home-Aid connects area home builders and others in the housing industry with non-profit organizations focused on ending homelessness in our area. Home-Aid's partner builders and trade partners donate their resources to renovate or build homeless shelters, housing facilities, and other non-profit spaces.

• Home-Aid just passed their 160th project, which is impressive. They've invested over $19 million into the local community—over $12 million was in donations from their fantastic contractors, trade partners and builders.

• Virginia last reported in the National Center for Homeless Education that 20,443 homeless children enrolled in public schools. That is a huge, staggering number. Only 9.5% of those children are in shelters or transitional housing. 73% of them are doubled up, meaning they live with multiple families in tiny homes. 16% of those children are unsheltered, meaning they're sleeping in cars, campgrounds, abandoned buildings or parks.

• Sometimes people forget the real need homeless people in this area experience. In an affluent area such as Northern Virginia, a lot of local homelessness is invisible.