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Speaker 1: On behalf of the Bob Woodruff Foundation and I.V.M.F., we just want to thank you all
for being here, for participating in our High Impact Collaboration, Barriers and Breakthroughs:
Employing Veterans with Disabilities. We really think that this is kind of like a phase one
just the beginning of something more. All along, if you've been involved with us at
all in the planning process or you know the folks at the Bob Woodruff Foundation and certainly
the folks at I.V.M.F., we're not really interested in just talking about it. We want to create
this forum, like I said, make the connections, but we have three things that we're going
to commit to you for now. Then your homework is to think about the people
that you've met and to think about some of the things that you've learned or some of
the connections or maybe this is deplicative or whatever and connect the dots yourselves.
We encourage you to network and help us be smarter because you all are the experts and
the ones that are doing the work. For us, what we are going to do is, 1. ... and
James, what a spoiler alert ... we're going to send you the resources that we've referred
to that I.V.M.F has done a lot of hard work and put it all in one place. I think that's
a really good start. Then the second thing that we're going to do and this is the big
news is, basically create and addendum to that guidebook that focuses specifically on
the specific needs of veterans with disabilities as it relates to employment, so kind of building
upon what I.V.M.F has done for veterans in general. We're going to pull some of the things
that we talked about there and then follow-up with a lot of you all and hopefully put something
meaningful together that we can use as another resource.
Then for the non-profits that are involved, the [inaudible 02:01] Foundation is interested
in the origin of doing this in the first place was for us to ... we want to have a meaningful
impact in the employment space so we thought, "Well, we should talk to the people that are
really doing this and that need the support and we'll just find the best ones and channel
our funding through them and to them." We hope that you've met some people and maybe
feel inspired and have some good ideas so we're opening it up to ... you can send us
a proposal for funding, it just has to have 2 things. It has to have a collaborative component
and it also has to not be duplicative of what the government is already providing for these
service members. Those are our 3 next steps and I encourage you and welcome hearing what
you've taken away from this and like I said, I think we'll be back. This is just the beginning.
Thank you all for participating. Speaker 2: I don't know that I have much to
add to that other than again, to say on behalf of the I.V.M.F. thank you very much. My buddy
Steve Robinson over there tossed out a ... I know when Steve, in a nice and sometimes not
so subtle way calls me to the carpet in terms of, "Hey, we don't want this just to be about
talk." Saving to the end, but we are going to build
from this place as Ann Marie's talked about, build from this session a new focus related
to our employment, work, and to include publishing a leading practices guide focused on employment
for veterans with disabilities very specifically. We're going to ask for a lot of your help.
We want to tell your stories. We want to take from the folks that were here so for example,
the N.O.D. stuff. We want to talk about that as a class-leading practice in the context
of this publication and a lot of the other things that were discussed here and again,
try to put some thought leadership into this space with regard to "How do we do this well?"
We're excited about what comes next. I think it's a high potential space. It certainly
is a deserving population and for a lot of us it really is a passionate ... it is vets
with disabilities that got me into this work 7 years ago to begin with. Again, thank you
very much for participating. We look forward to what comes next and hopefully everybody
has at least a couple hours to walk around a beautiful day in DC for the rest of the
day and check out the weather. Thanks so much. Speaker 1: Thank you to the I.V.M.F team,
certainly Mike and Ray and James and everyone else behind the scenes that's done so much.
Then of course the Bob Woodruff Foundation team, Barbara and Ashley and Sarah and the
event organizers. I know there's so many more people ... and of course Garth. Thank you
very much, all of you. Please stay and mingle or otherwise hit the road before the traffic.