Adopt A Woman Veteran Project

Since the American Revolution, more than 3 million women have served. More than 30% of these women are no longer with us. Sadly, every day, we lose another veteran, and we risk losing their story and their legacy – our legacy as a nation – forever.

The Military Women’s Memorial, for more than 30 years, has been entrusted with the mission to collect, preserve, and tell the stories of all women who have served our nation. One of the ways we do this is through storytelling, allowing each woman to record her written story of service in the MWM Register, the only national database that safeguards the stories of all women who have served. It is our privilege, honor, and duty to be entrusted with this immense responsibility and to care for the history of these women and our nation.

To ensure every woman’s story is told at her Memorial, our wonderful supporters across the country rallied together. They pored through newspapers, publications, and other media, collecting what is oftentimes the last story told about these women, and they sent in mailers filled with these documents. Their contents, containing details of their lives and clues to their past, in many cases are the last links to these women’s stories and possibly our last opportunity to ensure these women are remembered and their stories are documented, told, and live on for generations to come at their Memorial.

We need your help!

The MWM Adopt-A-Woman Veteran project is a national call to action for individuals and organizations across the country to adopt a woman veteran no longer with us and tell her story. If individuals and groups across the nation do not step up and dedicate themselves to tell the stories of these women who can no longer speak for themselves, history will be lost, and these women may be forgotten. Unless we take responsibility now, these integral threads that are the fabric of our nation – our legacy – will vanish.

“The living owe it to those who can no longer speak to tell their story for them.”

Czeslaw Milosz 

Please, Adopt A Veteran and Tell Her Story. Her Legacy is in Your Care.

Adopting A Woman Veteran

Tell Her Story

By participating in the Adopt A Woman Veteran project, the very important job of documenting and telling the story of a woman veteran is in your care. She is depending on you to ensure her legacy, the Memorial is depending on you to capture and preserve her story, and the nation is depending on you to ensure history is complete, one story at a time.

How To Participate

To take the pledge to honor a woman veteran by telling her story,

• Sign up at an in-person event at the Military Women’s Memorial during Women’s History Month (March).
• Contact our MWM Team at [email protected] 

Each participant will receive the name of a woman who served, a copy of her obituary or other document, and a link to a resource guide on how to tell and register her story in the national Register, including sample Register profiles to use as inspiration.

Check out the Adopt A Veteran Project Resource Guide with how-to instructions, tips, and examples of registrations.

Recruit Volunteers

Ask family members, friends, veterans groups, schools, and organizations to give their support to this important project. Adopting A Woman Veteran can be an individual or group service project. It is a great way to get involved and give back by honoring our women veterans and showing gratitude for their enormous sacrifice made for our nation and our freedom.