USO Naples - Creating a Second Family Overseas

While moving overseas is an exciting opportunity – filled with hopes and dreams of traveling and experiencing new cultures, beautiful scenery, and delicious food – it can also be an extremely challenging and difficult time. Military families move away from the comfort and convenience of their home country, family, and friends – removing their support system, typical life schedule, and career opportunities. For military spouses in particular, employment opportunities may be hard to come by, and during the normal week while their service members and kids are at work and school, being overseas can leave a lot to desire. With all staff members and many volunteers on the USO Naples team being military spouses themselves, the team personally knows and understands these challenges well, which is why the Naples Center is the first in the USO across the world to launch and implement a weekly Coffee Connections program, geared towards getting military spouses together each Friday for connection, relationship-building, and community.

Every Friday at 1000, spouses from around the Naples area gather together for freshly brewed coffee, sweet Italian pastries, and a different engaging activity. These activities range in style from holiday bingo to bath bomb making to wine glass painting, and while the activities themselves are fun and exciting, the more important and impactful meaning behind the program is that of connection. As spouses filter in each event, upbeat music fills the air as they enjoy some treats and mingle. Once everyone has arrived and gets settled, the team facilitates some kind of conversation starter or icebreaker to encourage participants to introduce themselves and meet new faces. The team has hosted speed friending and military spouse bingo previously, with the aim to encourage them to interact and speak with each participant and get to know them a bit more. They’re able to discover commonalities in life, where they’re from, and activities they like to do – targeting the sole purpose of helping these men and woman build everlasting friendships and a strong community in Naples.

“Thank you so much for having this event today. I look forward to it every week. I really enjoy the activities, but most importantly, I am grateful for the opportunity to get out of the house, meet others, and build a community here.” – This is a common response the team receives after every event, and one that is so truly important and touching to the USO team. While some of the activities and events may be simple, the gift that they provide is enormous.