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We'll give you our official welcome.
Welcome everyone to the November 28th Webinar,
"Navigating Generational Differences among Veterans and Veteran Organizations."
With us today we have seven veterans from different branches of service and different service eras
to tell you of their experiences and help organizations understand some of these differences
and present ideas for opening your doors to these diverse populations.
Koby Langley from the Corporation for National and Community Service is one of these veterans.
He will serve as our facilitator today.
But first we've ask him to give us a greeting from the Corporation and open the webinar for us.
Koby.
Thanks, Debbie, I appreciate it.
This is a topic that I think a lot of people have expressed some interest in,
a lot of our grantees and program managers have expressed some interest in,
and I'm really glad that American League Auxiliary and Points of Light
have decided to address this issue with everybody here today.
I come to this with some experience in that when I got out of the military in 2006,
I spent the better part of three years starting my own business
and didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the benefits and services that were available to me as a veteran
because I was too busy trying to put food on the table.
But in about 2008 I took a step back and I looked at some of the budget issues
that folks have to deal with in running their own business, and one of those issues was health care.
It was very expensive for me to have, you know, my own health care and be self insured.
I was sharing the story of, you know, my struggles with my new business, and just, very generally,
my struggles in kind of readjusting to life after the military with a good friend of mine,
a gentleman by the name of Rick Weidman from the Vietnam Veterans of America.
And he said to me,
"You know, Koby, you actually qualify for VA medical health care for some of the conditions that you incurred
while you were in the military service."
And I said, "You know, Rick, I hear you, but I've got to tell you, I'm just not inclined to go down that route.
And it seems kind of complex. And, you know, I'm okay right now.
I think I'm doing all right, but it is getting a little expensive."
And he said, "Listen, I've been where you've been. I came back from Vietnam
and I saw a lot of my friends try to go it alone the same way that you're trying to go it alone,
and the bottom line is there's help out there for you.
It doesn't take long. And as a matter of fact,
I'm going to e-mail you the one sheet of paper that can immediately get you access to VA health care
within a month or two."
As an Iraq War veteran, you know,
the generations that have come before you have spent a great deal of time and energy
in making sure that those benefits and services that are available to you remain available to you
and are protected and expanded.
And it's incumbent and it's your responsibility to utilize those benefits and services, if not for you,
then for your family.
So that was the advice that I received from a Vietnam veteran
and a well-known individual in the veteran advocacy space, Rick Weidman,
and I did. I filled out that document.
I was enrolled in the VA health-care system, and have been enrolled in VA health-care system ever since.
Of course it had an exceptional benefit to both me and my family,
and it's just one example of how generational differences can make an impact on one person's life.
So I think as people discuss their program designs
and discuss how to engage and interact with different generations of veterans,
it's important to both recognize that there are generational distinctions
and this is something that's not unique to the veteran space.
There are many studies on generational differences in the workforce,
but to understand and recognize those differences,
to address those differences in ways that are informed but to look at it as an empowering difference
and not necessarily a limiting difference. That's really, I think,
what I hope that this webinar can bring to light, is the ability of generations to work together
and to advance the causes of veterans and military family members,
Not only in this space, but in life at large.
So with that, I'm going to move on with the webinar.
We have as our presenter Mr. Bob Reeg who is the lead of the American Legion Auxiliary Call to Service Corps.
Bob is one of the more formative figures in the national service space
as it relates to veterans and military families for a number of reasons.
The reason I think that is most important is that the American Legion Auxiliary Call to Service Corps.
is one of the largest intermediary organizations that support veteran and military family efforts
from the Corporation of National Community Service.
What that means, in a nutshell, is that Bob has acted as the facilitator
towards engaging a number of veteran-serving organizations, over 40 to date,
that will utilize and leverage AmeriCorps VISTA members and AmeriCorps state and national members
to improve the service delivery models that they have already created to deliver services
to veterans and military family members.
It's an important model.
It's a model that we've written into our strategic plan as a way to expand services in the space,
and it's one that's now into it's forth year and has grown every year since.
I have to say that the model, in my estimation, has been relatively successful in expanding service
and has been extremely successful in engaging veterans of multi generations,
and Bob will talk about his program model
and will also share some of the generational differences in not only the organizations but the individuals
that are in the Call to Service Corps.
So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bob, and with that,
also thank everybody who is taking the time to be on this call today.
Bob.
Good afternoon, and I apologize in advance for some background noise, so I will be very brief today.
I have some construction going on at the worksite today.
Anyway, welcome everyone.
We are so pleased to co-sponsor this webinar series with Points of Light and Education Northwest
and are really grateful to both organizations for their active support of the webinar series and, of course,
to the corporation who authorizes all of us to do these kind of learning and development opportunities together,
so thank you very much.
Koby has done a nice job of setting up who the American Legion Auxiliary Call to Service Corps is,
so I appreciate his kind words.
I'm going to spend a moment to introduce you to our speakers today.
I'm very pleased that our panelists are all veterans,
and they're also connected to the National Service Movement either as AmeriCorps national members
or AmeriCorps VISTA members
or as veterans who are leaders in organizations that participate either in the Veteran Leader Corps, Points of Light,
or the Call to Service Corps of the American Legion Auxiliary.
So I will do a really quick run through of who you will be hearing from today in the question-and-answer session.
Certainly we want to recognize Koby's military experience and thank him for his service.
He will be an asset to this conversation, both as a facilitator and as a panelist.
Also joining us today is Melissa Focarelli.
She's an AmeriCorps VISTA member assigned to Valdosta Veterans First under the ALA Call to Service Corps,
and she's implementing the Community Blueprint in Valdosta, Georgia.
Prior to joining the Call to Service Corps, Melissa's service was in the United States Navy,
and she is currently in the United States Navy Reserve.
Also joining us today is John Gargotta.
He is the president and CEO of Impact Broward, which is a multi-service agency in Broward, Florida,
and they are very active in Senior Corp programming.
John's a veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star medal while serving in the United States Army
in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968.
Impact Broward is implementing a mentoring program that unites older generation veterans with younger veterans,
so we're excited to have a really concrete program example of inter-generational differences today.
Gerald Kapinos is the director of operations at Student Veterans of America.
He's a veteran of the United States Air Force, and he served as a member of the United States Security Forces.
He was deployed to the 380 air expeditionary wing to support both Operation Iraqi Freedom
and Operation Enduring Freedom,
so, in addition he'll be bringing his perspective as a veteran.
Student Veterans of America is mobilizing current student veterans in service
and supporting these veterans while they return to school.
He'll have some insights about what some of the needs and strengths are of the younger veteran generation.
We have an AmeriCorps national member joining us today who is serving at USA Cares, and his name is Jason Kennedy.
Jason is a post 9/11 veteran who served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
He was also part of the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Knox after being Medivaced out of Iraq.
Jason, in addition to his AmeriCorps service, he's currently in the National Guard
and has held multiple positions with the Kentucky National Guard.
We have Ronnie Miley who is a VISTA member, who is also assigned to the Community Blueprint Initiative
and he's in Macon, Georgia.
Ronnie brings experience to this conversation,
as well as being the commander and chapter service officer of a local disabled American Veteran chapter.
Ronnie is a veteran of dual service:
he's a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and the United States Army, and he has over 20 years of military experience.
And our final panelist today is Elizabeth Perez-Halperin.
She is president and founder GC Green.
She served in the United States Navy for over eight years as an aviation logistics specialist,
and she has several deployments in the fifth and sixth fleet.
She received an honorable discharge as a 9/11 service disabled wounded warrior veteran.
So as you see, we've assembled a group of speakers today who have multiple generations of service among them,
who have come from different branches of service.
Some have been deployed overseas.
Some have served our country stateside.
We're really proud to have assembled a really stellar group
of both men and women who have served our country so proudly, and we thank them for that.
With that speaker introduction let me return to our learning goals for this session,
and I need to go back to my Power Point slide to see that.
Our goals are to explore cultural and attitudinal differences between veterans of different generations
in order to help all of our listeners today plan outreach and service delivery accordingly;
to uncover factors that motivate veterans to unite multi-generationally
and organize both around their period of service and between their periods of service;
to glean strategies for working with veteran organizations that represent all veterans,
as well as groups that represent specific generations of veterans.
And, again, we have spokes-people today who come as organizing of veterans from different dimensions;
and then finally, to explore strategies for expanding your services to include veterans from all generations,
as well as specific periods of service.
So those are our learning goals, those are our presenters,
and I will turn this back to Education Northwest to take us to the next step.
And thank you again, and my apologies for the background noise.
We are going to try really quick again, we've got two of our presenters that are still not online with us.
So if all of our call-in users and participants could be very quite for just a moment.
John, could you say the hello for us.
Hello, this is John.
Keep talking for a second, John.
Okay. I'm sorry, this is John Gargotta.
We've got you.
Okay, Liz, could you say hello and say hi to us.
Hello.
Okay, Liz, we've got you.
All right, thank you.
This is Jerry. I think we have everybody.
Hello, this is Melissa.
Okay, glad you're finally in.
Okay.
So we're going to begin.
We apologize for the technical issues.
We have you all here.
Okay, so go ahead Koby take it away with the facilitation, please.
Fantastic, thanks everybody.
I appreciate everybody's patience while we got our members back on the presentation call.
So as Bob mentioned, these are the learning goals that we hope to share with everybody.
And, you know, I want to just start with kind of an overview, background of the demographics of population
and the changing of demographic population to kind of just set the stage.
Next slide, please.
So if folks aren't familiar with this pie chart I won't be surprised, but I would encourage everybody to visit VA.gov.
VA.gov has a comprehensive database of statistics and demographics about the veteran population
and it can be both compartmentalized, as well as customized based upon your search.
And these next two slides (or three slides I believe) are drawn off from that site.
They use an interesting model.
They use both the survey model that comes out every ten years, as well as their own data,
their own internal data on veterans and military families that they receive from their database in both DOD
and from their claims database.
So it's actually a pretty comprehensive look at the current snapshot of the veterans demographics.
So what you see right now today, there will be a projected population of 22-million veterans
and the female veteran population is 8.3%.
I know we're talking about generational differences,
but I did just want to bring up that one of the most interesting demographic changes in the veteran population
is the rapid expansion of women veterans,
and we're proud to have two women veterans as panelists here today to talk about some of those differences.
Next slide.
This slide tells you what the current breakout of those 22-million veterans are by generations or by service era.
You will notice that Gulf War era and Vietnam era veterans are the vast majority of the current veteran population,
and if you include all the Korean conflict and World War II into the older generation of veterans
and pull out the Gulf War, that represents over 70% of all veterans are actually not Iraq and Afghanistan
or Gulf War era veterans.
So the vast majority to today's veteran population are Korean, World War II, Vietnam,
and the earlier Gulf War era veterans.
I think that's important to annotate because a lot of the public dialog that we hear is, of course,
about the current generation of veterans because we've been in this conflict for ten years.
But as we serve, all veterans of all eras, as Secretary Shinseki would frequently remind me,
it's important to note that the vast majority of those individuals that we are serving are actually not
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Next slide.
So with that I'm going to turn it over to Melissa.
And I'm going to ask Melissa to share, if she would, you know,
some of the unique characteristics of women veterans and, you know, just talk to the panel and the participants
a little bit about what females veterans have in common with other veterans,
what some of the unique characteristics you believe that female veterans can kind of bring to the organizations
to help create inclusive programs for not only female veterans but also male veterans
and just share with us a little bit of your experience as an AmeriCorps VISTA.
That would be fantastic.
So I'll turn it over to Melissa.
Hi everyone. Thank you very much for joining us all today,
and thank you for dealing with the technical difficulties we have experienced thus far.
As I was introduced, I'm Melissa Focarelli, and I'm working with -- I'm currently a VISTA member,
working with Valdosta Veterans First, in Valdosta, Georgia.
I'm currently the program coordinator.
Valdosta Veterans First is part of the Community Blueprint Initiative,
which brings together lots of nonprofit organization and other government organizations
and brings it into a variety of issues and concerns that we are seeing among veterans,
and we do that through eight different mission areas.
Those mission areas are reintegration, education, employment, behavioral health, family strength, life skills,
volunteerism, and homelessness.
So we really cover the wide wraparound approach for veterans that are seeking assistance
when they get out of their service.
In the Navy we're sea warriors,
so I guess the unique difference among all the different service branches is that we're ship ward fighters.
Also, we are commonly referred to now as "sandbox sailors," meaning we do deploy to the desert.
We do deploy to other areas besides just on ships and aircraft carriers and such.
But I guess that does make us different and unique.
We also, of course, have the SEALS: the Sea, Air, and Land Specialists.
In terms of women veterans,
I think it's important to recognize the fact that as females in the military we are not treated differently
in terms of all the qualifications and standards that we must meet.
They have to be just the same as our male counterparts.
So in that respect we are not treated differently.
We do not ask to be treated differently.
We enlisted for the same reasons as our male counterparts enlisted, and that is to serve our country.
In terms of some differences and unique challenges that we face,
one of the biggest issues female veterans are facing is, unfortunately, military *** assault.
I also encourage everyone, there was a recent documentary that I saw.
It's called "The Invisible War," and it's an excellent documentary,
and it goes through and highlights some cases of military *** assault,
and it really brings it to the forefront because that,
unfortunately, is one of the biggest issues that we're dealing with right now.
Also, being a woman, having children, all females with children are required to have a family care plan,
and unfortunately, you know, if you're a single mother and you have two or three children
and you have no one to care for them, you know, that can be quite a challenge,
so it's important to remember that military families serve too, including children.
So those are just some of the highlights that I wanted to go over really quick.
And I will turn it back to you.
Thanks, Melissa.
Up next we have John Gargotta.
John Gargotta is the president and CEO of Impact Broward.
He is, of course, one of the sub-grantees in the American Legion Auxiliary.
I thought that Bob did a fantastic job of introducing John,
but if he had a couple other things to say about the program that would be fantastic.
Again, John, if you would share with us your own experiences as a veteran,
your current experiences as the president and CEO of Impact Broward,
and how your own perceptions and experiences as a Vietnam era veteran
have assisted you in your current work as the president and CEO of Impact Broward
and as a member the American Legion Auxiliary Call to Service.
Thank you.
Yes, a lot of questions there.
First off, being in the military and being in Vietnam just made me focus a little bit more.
In reference to the Vietnam veterans, I don't know if we have a closer bond or not than the newer veterans coming back.
We honestly were family, and we definitely watched each other's back, and I hope that's still going on today.
It also gave me a lot of confidence and gave me a lot of pride to help my country.
I definitely love the United States, and I am very proud to be a veteran.
Right now my agency has a program through RSVP;
that we are mentoring the younger veterans coming back with the older veterans.
So myself as an example from Vietnam, I am mentoring right now just two individuals that came back from Afghanistan.
One has some issues, and he needs some specific help.
I have been helping him with a legal thing, trying to get him some legal aide advice.
The other one has just recently got some money to go and get an apartment, so I helped him with transportation.
He had no transportation; so, through different agencies, we got him a bus pass. A simple thing like that!
I happened to have a bedroom set we got him, so he had a bedroom set to sleep in.
The veterans that I meet with, the other veterans, they need help in just, you know, knowing where to go.
A lot of them have no clue where to go.
Here in Broward County, that's the Fort Lauderdale area, 6% of our population are veterans, not that large.
But we do have a VA.
We don't have a full hospital here in this county, so they have to go down or be transported down in Miami,
which is about 30 miles from where we are.
The biggest thing I would say is that they do not want to come and ask for help.
Broward County did set a veteran's court,
meaning that any individual that goes through the Veteran's Court is assigned a mentor.
We, this agency, Impact Broward, provides those mentors to these younger vets.
And there's some great bonding.
I had one that said to me, anyone that served in Vietnam I give my full respect.
I'm telling you, I'm in touch with them every week.
At least twice a week I'm in touch with these mentees, and it's a great feeling for me.
I would say to anyone, you know, if you can duplicate this program, it's not that difficult to do,
going out and recruiting the older vets.
And they honestly do want to help.
The difficult part would be to come in and find the younger vets, and if you do enough networking...
It took us a few years to get this up and running, but finally, we're off and running.
We have about 24 mentors right now, with about 40-some mentees.
I don't know if I answered all your questions, but if I missed anything, please let me know.
John, I think that's fantastic.
Thank you so much. We appreciate your services, as well has your continued service.
Up next we have Gerald Kapinos.
Gerald is the director of operations through Student Veterans of American, as Bob mentioned.
He and I share, actually, two combat deployments, both Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Gerald's work in Student Veterans of America is, I think, particularly unique,
as it relates to inter-generational issue, because, quite frankly, when you are a student veteran
and you are coming into a new environment, so to speak,
the generation difference are actually younger generational differences
and you have an interesting mixture of Gen Y and Gen X'ers, and it's just a very different experience.
I'm not going to talk too much more about it because I want Gerald to really kind of talk to us
about some of the unique challenges that younger veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan face
when trying to reintegrate into an academic settings,
and also to talk a little bit about his own experiences in leveraging some of the unique characteristics
and qualities of inter-generational differences to make his program a success.
So with that, I'm going to ask Gerald to go ahead and tell us a little bit about your program.
All right, thanks a lot.
Thank you also for having us on here, and I appreciate the invite and the opportunity to speak
and for everyone joining us.
As introduced, my name is Gerald Kapinos.
I'm director of operations of Student Veterans of America.
I just have a quick elevator pitch of who we are.
We are a coalition of student veteran groups on college campuses around the country.
We have a little over 500 at this moment using the peer-to-peer support student organization model.
We have a mission to provide military veterans with the resources, support,
and advocacy needed to succeed in higher education.
Following graduation, our vision is that all veterans will succeed in higher education,
achieve their academic goals, and gain meaningful employment.
Just a quick plug for our website--www.student-veterans.org--is the best way to get in contact with us.
But speaking, you know, anecdotally a little bit about my experience, as you can see,
I served in the United States Air Force from 2002 to 2008.
I joined right after September 11th, and largely because of September 11th, the attacks that had happened,
I went and visited the recruiter and started basic training in January of 2002.
So without that event happening I more than likely wouldn't have been in the military.
During my six years of service, I served as security forces.
It's what we call it in the Air Force, but it's essentially military police.
So I was a military policeman for six years and did two deployments: one that supported OIF and OEF,
and then a second tour as part of, actually, an army unit.
I think that one of the panelist's had spoken earlier with the mixed units and the sandbox navy.
We're essentially the same thing.
I was part of an army unit that was a joint venture.
We had both Navy, Marine, and Army folks, along with some other coalition forces from different countries.
So that was my experience.
Then coming up to 2008, when my enlistment was expiring, I had made the decision to separate.
I actually didn't join at all because of the education benefits or GI bill that was offered,
and my year's end I was actually intending to be in 20-plus years and make a career out of it.
Finally, I had some personal issues and decided to separate when I did and enter into college.
When I entered into college, and speaking directly to the question you had with the inter-generational differences,
I was about 26 years old, I had been married for about six years at that point and was entering into college.
When I was sitting in class I was at some of the basic level classes (the Basic English and Math, and what not),
and my classmates that I was sitting next to and relating to, they all had been in high school the year before that.
Well, when they were getting ready for junior high at that point in their life, I was already serving overseas
and during combat deployment, so I had a number of years -- you know,
different experiences where I would travel around the world, travel around the country,
and I had actually risen to the level of noncommissioned officer where I was actually leading troops
and leading them in my second deployment.
So I had a different maturity level, different experiences, had been married, or still am married.
Had been married for a while, had my own family, independent and taking care of myself,
and then relating to someone or a number of people in my class whose biggest issues
or the biggest crisis they had in life was being away from home for the first time.
So not that there's anything wrong with that, you know, that's normal for the traditional college experience,
but having those differences or those barriers already present becomes somewhat of a difficult challenge set
to how to relate to those folks.
I was kind of puzzled with how can I talk to and relate to these folks.
And, you know, we needed to work together in small groups and academic settings and work together in study groups
and whatnot, so how am I going to be able to relate to these people when there's such a divide.
So that's where I connected with my local group with my campus.
I didn't even realize it was that big of a problem.
I just didn't understand.
I just felt like I was beating my head against the wall and couldn't relate to people
and felt like the old guy in class and all that kind of stuff.
I didn't realize this until I hooked up with some other people who were in the same situation
who were military veterans you could realize that this was actually a normal thing.
And, you know, there was a little bit of a transitioning that, you know,
I needed to change my mindset coming from that structured military environment into more of the freedom,
independent-based civilian society.
So once I had mastered that, which it took a couple years in my college years, once I had mastered that,
my transition was fairly in place.
I ended up graduating from University Wisconsin Madison in 2010,
so I did about three heavy years of solid course work, full-time load, about 18 credits a semester,
plus full-time summers.
I was able to graduate in short order.
I think that answers all your questions.
One thing I just wanted to caveat was I think, my understanding is a lot of people on here
aren't familiar with the military or are just trying to gain an understanding of the military,
and I haven't heard yet -- although I agree with everything else that's been said,
one thing I always noticed in the military
and I think it should be said to folks who are trying to gain an understanding is that the military is
microcosm of the regular society.
Like I was an American citizen before I joined, a civilian just like anybody else.
I ended up going into the service.
I did my time and got out.
And it's just like everybody else.
There's independent relationships and different aspects and experiences that people have in different services,
and there's different nuances.
They are attached to the Air Force or the Navy or the Army or the Marine Corp, or even the Coast Guard, but, you know,
a large part, a lot of it is very similar.
I think the common denominator that every group has is that it's from the entire population,
so just like you're going to the see the variety and differences throughout the U.S. population,
you're also going to see that in the military too.
Good, bad, or indifferent, that is there. I think the experience that I had is just learning and experiencing
and working with people from different parts of the country,
different parts of the world--coming together in a unit and working for a single mission--was very helpful.
So there were many different demographic backgrounds that you get exposed to in the military,
and I think that comes into play.
Finally, talking about the inter-generational differences, our group isn't necessarily focused on a specific era,
although we have lots of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans
simply because it's the younger folks who are getting out who are looking to go to college.
Also, there's quite a few, due to the economy now and different issues that are happening,
there's also lots of Vietnam veterans and older generations that are also either returning to school
or even heading towards retirement and getting involved in the campus environment,
and that's really where we're trying to -- you know, we're more of an issue-based organization.
We're really focused on that college academic environment,
and that can kind of span across the generational differences on the college campuses.
But if anyone else has any other questions or anything else, thank you, and, again, thank you for having me here.
Thanks, Gerald.
We're actually going to hold the questions for the panel members until we get through with everybody.
I appreciate you sharing your experiences with us.
Next we have Jason Kennedy who is an AmeriCorps national member with USA Cares.
He also has experiences in the National Guard and, again, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran.
Jason, it would be fantastic if you could talk to us about USA Cares and actually the unique model USA Cares,
which is a multi-generational service model,
and any experiences that you have had with peer-to-peer support
from other generation of veterans in support of your program.
Jason.
Yes, sir, I appreciate you guys having me today.
Like you said, my name is Jason Kennedy.
I am a National Guard member, and I do work with USA Cares.
USA Cares is actually a post 9/11 resource for Iraq and Afghanistan members.
We do assist with the active duty and veterans from the post 9/11.
We have different departments I guess you could say.
One of them is a routine assistance where we assist with your standard bills (utilities, rent, car payments,
things like that), whenever service members have, you know,
hit the hard times with there military pay is not coming in correct
or the VA isn't paying them on time like they're supposed to.
Then we also have a jobs for vets side that does assist with veterans in getting them to interviews
and to those new jobs. Not necessarily helping them find the jobs; but assisting then along the way
and hooking them up with other resources that do the job assistance.
We also have a program called "Warrior Treatment Today" that is a PTSD program.
We try to assist with veterans while they go into treatment
and keep their bills up if they have a loss of income so that they can get the treatment that they need
and keep their life going while they're in there.
As you mentioned, I am a member of the National Guard.
I joined in 2004.
One of my first things as a National Guard member was Hurricane Katrina, and shortly after that,
I spent a year-and-a-half in Afghanistan.
Being in the National Guard, you have a unique perspective on the military
and on civilian life because you're never fully engulfed in one or the other.
National Guard members do bring a lot of experience to the military,
as well as bringing their military experience back to the civilian sector, you know.
And the caveat off of Gerald, the newer generation, the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans,
they are trying to get back into school, which, for me personally, has been a difficult task.
Both of those deployments, I did have to drop out of school,
and fighting with the system to be able to gain that educational benefit and, you know,
continue in the civilian life is difficult.
I'm not sure if I got all your questions, but I'd be happy to answer anymore later.
Thanks, Jason, really appreciate it.
And, Jason, in your experience with USA Cares,
do you see the benefit and utility of having other generation veterans serve, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans?
I understand that the core constituency for USA Cares are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans,
but I would assume that a large number of your leadership
and membership are actually members of other generations of combat.
There is a large number of our board of directors that they are from the previous generation,
so they do have that understanding of what the service member is now going through,
and as far as just the empathy that is needed to be able to decide on each of these cases individually
of understanding exactly what is going on.
If I told somebody that did not have the military experience,
"Well this is what's going on with this particular individual," they wouldn't understand why
or how that's a factor in, you know, helping them out, trying to get them assistance.
Thanks, Jason.
Up next we have Ronnie Miley.
Ronnie Miley is with Volunteer Macon.
He is an AmeriCorps VISTA member, and he has over 20 years of service in the Coast guard.
Ronnie, if you would be willing to talk to us a little bit more about the activities at Volunteer Macon,
but also I think this would be an interesting time to talk about some the differences of the military services;
the Coast Guard having a different mission and mandate than the U.S. Army obviously,
and some of the differences in terms of how to communicate to different services
and vernaculars that people should be sensitive too, and possibly also some things that folks should probably not say
or be wary of saying when they're engaging a veteran for the first time for instance.
So with that I am going to turn it over to Ronnie.
Hello. Can you hear me okay.
Hello?
Hi, Ronnie, we can hear you good.
You need to just speak up just a little.
Okay.
First off, I am a member of dual service: both the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army.
Actually during the time of 1969, if you didn't join you were being drafted.
I thought it was a good place to stay out of Vietnam.
But I ended up in the Coast Guard in Vietnam anyway under the Department of Navy.
Then after coming out of the Coast Guard, as many Vietnam vets were,
we made a commitment not to be involved in anything to do with the military.
But many of us ended up back in Reserves, whether it was Army, Air Force, or whatever,
and that's a strange story in itself!
But many Vietnam vets end up retiring years later from the U.S. Reserve.
Maybe it's because of the fact that we felt a closeness and camaraderie, as one of my earlier presenters said,
a closeness of veterans of Vietnam.
My son is a veteran.
I am a member and commander of the Disabled American Veterans chapter here in Macon, Georgia,
and one of the things that we see a lot, when I deal with veterans and their benefits,
one of the things stated, many veterans have no idea what they are entitled to as far as benefits.
Many times veterans relate the VA hospital to what they perceive as you having to be a disabled veteran
in order to use it, not realizing that services at the veterans' hospitals are there for all veterans.
When you're talking to veterans or military people, you really have to understand the communication, the culture
because many times you have to speak the language of the veteran.
One of the things that I find is that I am 100% disabled vet.
It was almost 20 years after going into service before I actually used the VA Hospital,
and that was because of the horror stories that many people heard about the VA Hospital.
And I can tell you at the time, those horror stories were absolutely true, but the services have greatly improved.
There's always room for improvement, but those services have greatly improved.
But there was an article just this weekend in the Macon paper talking about how veterans of all service of war,
all the way from the World War II, Korean War,
up to present still have no idea as to the benefits that they are entitled to.
That's where we have failed as a society to veterans, not just veterans but military families,
the families of veterans, families of people that have served in service,
because realize that when a person serves in uniform, then a great sense, their families,
their children are also serving in the military with them.
Many of them have no idea of the things that they are entitled to.
I find that as a commander of a disabled American Veterans chapter here.
My brother who is a commander of a VFW chapter here,
and he also served almost 12 years ago as Chaplain in the VA Hospital in Decatur.
We find out that there were people that were so misinformed or uninformed about things that they were entitled to,
and I think that's where we fall short.
Here in Macon with Community Blueprint we have had the opportunity to -- we had a great (inaudible) event back in
September, where we served over 300 veterans.
We brought in not just military organizations but civilian people from the (inaudible) to do hair cuts,
to do eye screenings, to do blood pressures, diabetes screenings, everything that we could to bring veterans together.
And serve veterans, and also to give out information about benefits and things that veterans are entitled to,
because some of the issues are related to military service.
Some of the issues are just related to life itself, and that's where we have to continue to try to fill the gap,
not to reinvent the wheel but come together
and find out where services are already being -- where people are already being served,
and if we can connect those services we can work together to help the veterans
and their families continue to transition into a better life.
Thanks, Ronnie. I appreciate it.
It sounds like what you've experienced is a challenge in
how you communicate the benefits and services to different generations of veterans.
That older generation of veterans will probably have a greater level of resistance to being connected
to those benefits and resources because of the history and experiences that they have both observed
and heard about from the care and services from different veteran service entities and organizations like the VA.
I think that's reflected in the statistics that show there's a much higher utilization of VA benefits
for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans even today than there is for Vietnam Era veterans as they transition down.
Thank you so much for your service.
Up next we have Liz Perez.
Liz Perez is a fellow with Mission Continues with the Community Blueprint.
And, Liz, it would be fantastic if you could speak a little bit about the Community Blueprint,
the Community Blueprint model,
and how the Community Blueprint is looking at leveraging generational differences
to the benefit of the Community Blueprint and also your own personal experiences in the Navy
and also as a female veteran.
Liz.
Hi, can you hear me okay?
Hello.
Yes, Liz, yes, you're fine.
Okay, great.
Well thank you for having me this morning.
And, yeah, so it was great hearing from everybody and different perspectives.
I originally was attracted to the Community Blueprint primarily because of just my personal experience
and what I saw with different veteran organizations.
There's just a lot of organizations that are out there but not necessarily a way
to distribute that information to veterans.
So I believe these organizations have the right passion to get out there and to find the vets
and to be able to help veterans, but there isn't an organized manner
and way to have actually the information distributed to the veterans themselves.
I'm working in Orange County under the Community Blueprint,
part of my task there is to find out what organizations are out there to help military veterans and families,
whether it's combating homelessness, finding jobs, clothing, things of that nature.
It's just amazing because people think of Orange County and they think of luxury and things like that.
But it's pretty interesting because you have a lot of, unfortunately, poverty in that area too.
Camp Pendleton is not very far, probably maybe about a 45-minute drive, 40-minute drive, or maybe less actually,
into Orange County.
So I really saw a need there, and what we have in San Diego, which is our neighbor here in Orange County.
San Diego seems to be more organized, and I think it's because it's a military town,
so I'm hoping to bring that to Orange County.
And just a bit of my background, my father served 20 years Army.
I served about a little over eight years Navy.
As a kid growing up on the military bases, I hadn't really seen my dad; nor had that kind of relationship.
He was on deployment quite a bit.
I, unfortunately, lost my father in '95 due to a lot of medical complications,
and I just think that he was kind of one of those, unfortunately I would say, forgotten soldiers, if you will.
He just didn't know where to get the help.
He had the VA, but he just kind of needed the extra help to get the help he needed and maybe he would be here today.
So that's a lot of my passion and why I joined the military.
In joining the military as well, I also met and had a friend that I met in boot camp
and I think I may have shared this story -- I don't know if you remember, Koby -- in D.C.
I met a friend.
She's from San Diego, and we joined boot camp together and went to "A" school together, and, you know,
a lot of the breakout.
I joined in '97, and a lot of stuff was happening during that time.
And I'm sure you guys heard of the USS Cole...
I lost her on the USS Cole.
So a lot of these things started to go into action in what I'm doing today and a lot of my passion to help veterans.
So that's a lot of the reason why I decided to be a part of Mission Continues as well was because of my father
and in her honor.
Looking back at my dad serving in the first Gulf War and myself in the second Gulf War,
I just really knew there had to be change, not just helping veterans but there had to be change in the long term.
And the long term, in my eyes, was finding the solution to reduce energy consumption.
We're battling.
We're out there for a reason, and a lot of it's because of our dependency on foreign oil, and part of that.
Coming back in 2006, when I transferred out, I had been in the renewable energy sector since then.
I got a lot of my training here locally in Southern California, San Diego primarily.
I started a company in 2009 that focused on clean energy, job training, and job connection for veterans.
With that experience from 2006/2009,
what I'm also hoping to bring with the Community Blueprint is my network of different universities
that would work with, and actually, we're teaming here at San Diego State University,
with their clean energy job certification,
working with different cities here throughout California; but also want to bring that training to Orange County
to make sure that we have that job connections there in Orange County. And actually it's going pretty well.
I've offered at least 50 different positions there.
So far one of our first traininga is this Friday.
I'm really excited about it.
San Diego State University wants to start a -- we'll see how things go,
but they are going to start offering off-site campus.
I believe it's like an extended campus at Orange County, so we're working with sending states offering that training.
I've heard numerous times in this conversation a lot of veterans say,
"We don't know our benefits, we don't know if we're able to even qualify for those benefits."
So I'm hoping to distribute that information.
A lot of these trainings, scholarships, grants, and training--primarily, or course, in the clean energy sector,
but there's a lot of different industries that are also willing to help.
One, before I get off here, I'm also working with the SBA.
I'm an entrepreneur. I do work with the SBA quite a bit. And I'm connected with the Santa Ana SBA,
which is part of Orange County, with the CEO there.
Their group has agreed to work with all the small businesses there. To capture all of their job connections
and their descriptions.
So basically once they're transferring out, whether it's Miramar or Camp Pendleton.
As we find these veterans that are transferring out, they have immediate job connections.
And then also a pathway into entrepreneurship in that industry; whether it's HR or IT--whatever it might be,
fashion industry, clean energy. We're aligning them with work, immediate work.
Like myself, I didn't start a company over night.
I actually had been in the industry three years prior to starting the company. So you kind of need that knowledge
and that base, that baseline, and also aligning that comes with mentorship.
So we're working through that right now.
I'm really excited about that.
Thanks, Liz. This is fantastic.
I think one of the more interesting stories you shared with me when we spoke was how when you got out
that you weren't really aware of all the benefits and services that were available to you.
And I would assume, you know, as you know,
the utilization of the Department of Veterans Affairs by female veterans is not where the Secretary wants it to be
and definitely not where it should be.
Do you think that there's just a large number of female veterans
or a larger number of female veterans than there should be that aren't aware of those benefits and services
and that as people think about their program models they should think about how to communicate
the benefits and services to female veterans as kind of a very specific demographic in order to target
and make sure that their messages are receptive?
Well I think one of the things I learned as not just a female veteran but where I was deployed or received --
and I was in the Navy so I wasn't like boots on the ground like Marines and Army are, and I didn't realize.
They looked at my service record and my medals and they said, "Geez, you're a combat vet." And I didn't realize,
I mean you're out to sea.
You're still in harm's way.
I had gotten injured and it was on deployment, so those are like things I didn't know.
So they aligned me with the right care.
For a while I mean I was without any VA medical benefits.
I just got my -- and this is the truth -- I had just gotten my VA benefits maybe less than two years ago.
I just, like, tapped into it.
I didn't even know I had these benefits.
And I didn't even know that I was service disabled.
And I was walking around not knowing these kind of things and realizing I actually needed the care,
and then on top of that, finding more resources.
At the time I got out I was a single mother.
I had a really tough time reintegrating back, really because I didn't have that network.
I didn't know anybody.
And like you had mentioned, Koby, the high cost of medical benefits. I think that's what did me in honestly,
because I wasn't factoring in the cost of the benefits I had to attain in the outside world. Then things happened
and I found myself without those resources.
That's great.
Yeah.
I found myself without resources, and then part of my story, for a very short time, a week,
I found myself without a place to live because I couldn't make the rent.
I mean, luckily, I found a place here near Camp Pendleton that helps out.
It wasn't anything veteran centric, but they did help out the local community.
I think we really need more women -- and that's another thing I want to help out with Community Blueprint,
because in my experience a lot of places didn't take women and children.
They just took one individual, and so they didn't accept children, so I didn't have a place to go.
I don't think that's a unique experience.
I think that's actually an important takeaway is that both the Department of Veterans Affairs
and other services really need to pay attention to the expanding demographic of women veterans.
And, you know, you hear this very frequently
that a lot of women veterans just simply don't even realize that they eligible for benefits and services
because those benefits and services aren't adequately communicated to them.
So we thank you so much for your service, Liz.
What I would really like to do is, I would like to go ahead and offer folks that have to get off,
since we're running a little bit over, the opportunity to get off.
And if there are any additional questions for the panelists,
What I'd like to do is, I'd like to try to extend this by another ten minutes at least
to allow some of the participants to issue some questions
if that's okay with our facilitation group out there with Ed Northwest.
Yes, Koby, we've got about three questions that have come through our chat panel
that Mike and Eric can field over to you right now.
Yeah, thanks, Debbie.
The first question we got in was from Valerie who is Chapter president for Blue Star Mothers of Vermont,
and they were really intrigued by the mentoring program that John mentioned early in the webinar.
And, you know, they've got a large number of veterans that are graduating out of transitional housing
and having some difficulties, you know, around life skills
and getting the ball rolling with that transition.
She specifically was looking for funding for a mentoring program like that.
So I don't know if John could talk about maybe where their resources come from, or others on the panel.
This is John.
Our funding is through the RSVP program, which is the Corporation for National Community Service.
They are promoting all RSVPs to do some work with the veterans.
So if there is a veteran RSVP organization in your area you might want to approach them.
Does that help?
Great. Thank you, John.
You know, and also note,
for anyone who is intrigued by some of the mentoring ideas that have come up on this webinar today,
you might want to check and see if your state has a state mentoring partnership in it.
About half the states in the union do.
You can find a listing of those at Mentoring.org.
That's the national mentoring partnership website.
They tend to focus a lot on youth mentoring programs,
but a lot of them also dabble in mentoring for kind of young adults and even sometimes workplace
or other environments, and they might not have funding for you,
but they might be a real valuable resource in helping design a program, recruit members to the program,
so you can also look for those as well.
May I add one more thing? This is John.
Angela, who was interested in knowing if there were specific organizations to contact
that might be able to help recruit veterans for AmeriCorps state service in Alabama.
Does anyone have any suggestions for Angela.
This is Ronnie.
Hey, one idea is to contact the base headquarters of the (inaudible) or any of the VSOs,
the Veterans Service Organizations, whether it be VFW, American Legion, or VAV,
and make contact with the headquarters to see if they can assist in recruiting.
Great. Thank you, Ronnie.
That's a great suggestion.
Anyone else on our panel have a recommendation for her?
Sure. This is Koby.
We actually just started a new VISTA project with the State of Alabama.
They have a new VISTA project with the State of Alabama National Guard.
There will be about ten or so VISTA members that will be connecting members -- excuse me -- returning guardsmen,
reservists, and family members with benefits and services.
Great. Thank you, Koby.
The last question we got in was from Janine who had a question around whether anyone was doing work with veterans
who have children who are not even aware that their parents served.
Perhaps they weren't even born at the time of their service or maybe they were too young to kind of remember,
but they're still suffering form the side effects of that military service, you know,
whether the parent is still struggling with some issues once they've come back home.
And she notes that they've got a large number of vets
who have kids and families who weren't part of their lives when they were in active duty,
and they're kind of outside of the framework of the traditional support network for military families.
So any thoughts about that?
Yeah, this is Ronnie again.
You will find that quite a bit, particularly in older veterans, particularly Vietnam vets
or even the Persian Gulf vet where they may have married for the second or third time, and their family has no idea,
or even if they have an idea, they have no idea about their disposition, whether they are disabled,
whether they have any illnesses related to them.
And I do, because I'm a service officer who works with that all the time,
because you run into problems as to where are their DD214 forms? Have they been filed?
I've talked to wives or dependants of veterans, some of them that are still alive, some of them that's deceased,
and their children that have no idea of their status.
And you will have to go through the process of trying to work and find out what branch they served in
and information about their time of service and if they had any illnesses.
Because that is a real problem when it comes to veterans, particularly because of the transition
or transition of war that we live in at this time.
Great. Thank you for that, Ronnie.
Anyone else on our panel want to chime in?
Well I'm going to take a different spin on that. This is Koby.
You know, I think one of the more interesting ways of encouraging members of the military to talk about their stories,
which is kind of the first step to receiving benefits.
If you're in a situation where there's a family member that you know has had some military service
and may be eligible for benefits and services and they come to you guys and say,
"You know, how do I engage my dad or my granddad and what kind of benefits and services is he eligible for?"
but they actually don't know because they haven't talked to them.
I don't think that's an unusual situation.
One of the more interesting projects I've seen since I've been here is the StoryCorps project from Senior Corps.
Senior Corps members actually went out and created hundreds of different stories of military service members,
mostly older generation of veterans,
and posted their stories in the Veterans History project with the Library of Congress.
I would be really interested to see, you know,
an expansion of those kinds of activities just for the fact that it starts the discussion, right,
and it makes it an easy way to start the discussion where you have a family member
that actually becomes the facilitates of that StoryCorps project.
It's called the "Veterans History Project,"
and there is also a nonprofit organization called "StoryCorps"
that's now just starting a compendium of service stories.
I think that would be a nice way to actually start the conversation, because it's got to start somewhere.
Great. Thank you for that, Koby.
That's a great suggestion.
I think that's all we have right now for audience questions.
I'll give folks one more chance to ask something of our panel.
While we're waiting, Koby, are there any last points or tips that you wanted to give our audience today,
anything we didn't get to?
Actually, you know what I think I'm going to do,
I think I'm going to hand it over to Margie who has been a wonderful assistant in this entire process.
She has been steadily taking notes and annotating some interesting comments that she's heard. So, Margie.
Thank you, Koby.
I am not a vet myself, and I've been listening for the differences and similarities among the generations,
because we were talking about how to navigate some of these things.
And I just want to kind of sum up the things that I've heard and give it to you to kind of noodle over a little bit.
What I've heard loud and clear is that the things that are the same among generations of veterans
are that they feel like their fellow service members are like family to them.
Those they served with are like family,
the sense that I've got your back is something that carries through each generation,
the passion for serving the country no matter what the political or historical context was,
and the sense that vets tend to understand the issues that other vets face.
Those seem to be coming through loud and clear among all the generations.
I was surprised actually, because it almost seemed as if the similarities were stronger than the differences.
That being said, I did hear some differences, which I'll throw out their to consider.
I think one of the most significant ones was the 8% of the veterans who are female
and the issues that they come home with around *** harassment and the burden of their families and children
and their need to access the health-care system or the other benefits that they haven't been aware of.
So that would create some differences of earlier generations.
The generational difference that almost is backwards, for those who return and go back to school,
they are now in the position of dealing with younger generations and the different life experiences
and needing to navigate those skills.
So think about that in terms of your National Service Program.
If you have AmeriCorps members who are newly graduated from college and you've got some vets who have life experience,
there's something different going on there, and talking about it and communication is going to be an important thing.
The lack of knowledge of services available to all vets seems to be a difference with older veterans, in particular,
the quality of the services and the willingness to access them.
And then another interesting thing -- I'm not sure if this is accurate or not,
but it appears that the younger vets tend to come from military families,
so perhaps there's a support network there that may not be there for some of the earlier generations.
So that's from an outsider listening in.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories.
You've been an incredible, incredible resource for us and a gift.
Debbie.
Thank you, Margie. That was a nice wrap up.
Okay, what we'll do then, since we didn't get anymore questions from anybody,
we'll just go to the end of our webinar here.
Like we said earlier, we will capture the chat conversation and take out anything that's unnecessary
and cull it down to the really key points and put that on the Veterans and Military Families Knowledge Network for you.
Also, the recording will be up there in a couple days, with closed captioning, and a transcript for you,
so you'll be able to get on this resource and see all the wonderful things they have there for you.
If you haven't joined this already,
in our follow-up e-mail that I send you will be information for how to join the network.
Also, our next webinar is going to be the second Wednesday of December because of the Holidays.
It will be about Responding to the Signature Wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts,
about TBI and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Our presenters will include folks from Give an Hour, the TBI project coordinator from VetCorps in Washington State,
and the National Center for PTSD.
Also, we want to thank all our panelists for being on the call today,
and we've got an evaluation that's going to pop up after the WebEx signs off today.
We are doing these monthly webinars for you, and we try to make them better every time,
and we also ask you for suggestions, for tips
and presenters that you would like to have on the webinars in the future,
so please fill that out for us so that we can make these better for you in the future.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We really appreciate your time and attention.
And we look forward to serving you guys again.
Thanks so much everybody. 845 01:14:00,000 Bye-bye.