Southern Arizona VA Health Care System (SAVAHCS) is making a supportive housing and job-training program accessible and expanding available resources to area military veterans through a partnership with Pima County’s Kino Veterans Workforce Center.

The initiative follows a recent Pima County supervisory board meeting during which the two entities signed a no-cost memorandum of understanding. The agreement enables the SAVAHCS Department of Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) to offer employment services and other resources to those actively seeking jobs through the Kino center at 2801 E. Ajo Way, Tucson.

Michael Arinello and Matthew Staples, HUD-VASH vocational development professionals from the Kino center, noted that the partnership would broaden access to opportunities and local agencies, which veterans might otherwise have not been able to utilize, including computer usage, networking and food bank provisions, according to a press release.

Arinello and Staples shared examples of the Kino center’s success, such as a veteran’s widow who thought she was not trained for employment only to realize that caring for her late husband for the past decade was a professional skill.

“Well, guess what we told her?" Arinello told the Tucson Metro Chamber. "That (caregiving) is a skill.”