Prompted by a call from First Lady Michelle Obama to end veteran homelessness by 2015, New Orleans, Houston, Las Vegas, Philadelphia and 15 other cities as well as the entire Commonwealth of Virginia met that challenge. However, you’ll still spot former service members sleeping on the streets of each of those locales today.
Homelessness, after all, is not a static challenge. As quick as a dozen former warriors are placed in housing, a Greyhound bus could drop an Iraq War veteran off in Mobile, Ala., with no place to sleep, for example, or a Gulf War soldier in Syracuse, N.Y., could lose his job and then his apartment. “The truth is that ending veteran homelessness requires daily work,” Sam Joel, a policy advisor who assists New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in leading the city’s work to end veteran homelessness, tells NationSwell. “We did what we sought to do. But it’s one thing to reach a goal, and another thing to sustain it.”
As volunteers fan out across urban areas this month to log a point-in-time homeless count, mayors and policymakers await figures on whether the systems they created were effective enough to keep veterans housed. (Last January, 47,725 veterans nationwide were homeless.) The exact definition of how to “end homelessness” varies; the gold standard — achieving “functional zero” — provided by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness generally defines it as offering interim shelter and then permanent housing to every homeless veteran who has been identified, plus creating the capacity to house any newly homeless vets as quickly as possible, usually in a 90-day period.
Approaching the one-year anniversary of its achievement, New Orleans is confident they’ll be pleased with their updated numbers. For one, the Big Easy now maintains an “active list,” that tracks every homeless veteran by name and the details of when and where they checked in for services — so it’s pretty much aware of any population fluctuations.
The city’s data is also a metric of how far it has come since Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Back in 2010, when Landrieu took office, nearly 4,500 people (down from 117,600 in 2007) were still stranded without homes in the Crescent City. “In New Orleans, we are all too familiar with the feeling of homelessness. After Hurricane Katrina, literally all of us were without a home,” Landrieu wrote in an op-ed. By last January, only 1,700 remained homeless. Shortly after, New Orleans was certified as the first major city to end veteran homelessness.
Many people ask what’s the Big Easy’s secret? Joel says there are three: “partnership, partnership, partnership.” Previously, services overlapped and communication lagged. Today, local, state and federal agencies come together to collaborate on the same goal.
With the help of active duty military and other veterans, New Orleans sweeps every block to find homeless vets and usually connects them to permanent housing within a few weeks, Joel reports. While unable to provide an exact figure of days that pass before being housed, Joel says the average is below the original 30-day goal.
As New Orleans is pioneering best practices for maintaining an end to veteran homelessness, other local and state governments are hoping to achieve the same. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness plays a key role by sharing strategies and data across communities, facilitating collaborations, checking in to “make sure we’re being as strategic as possible” and ensuring the momentum is sustained nationwide, says Robert Pulster, regional coordinator for the council.
“I think there was a moral imperative to support men and women who had served in the military, to see they were well cared for,” Pulster says. With leadership from the White House, plus bipartisan support from Congress, the country has an unique opportunity to end veteran homelessness nationwide.
More importantly, however, is the idea that ending veteran homelessness is the first step in ending homelessness of all types. “We realized we could learn a lot about how to build the kind of collaborative systems and how we use resources to serve the entire population,” he continues. It doesn’t matter whether they’re led by a strong mayor or governor, cities like New Orleans prove that ending veteran homelessness is both possible and sustainable.
MORE: One Man, His T-Shirts and an Honorable Mission to House Homeless Veterans
Category: Advancing National Service
13 Questions with Marine-Turned-Poet Maurice Decaul
On his first day in Iraq, Maurice Decaul realized that despite being a member of the U.S. Marine Corps — an organization that, in his own words, “relentlessly trains for war” — he only had an intellectual understanding of war. That feeling was displaced quickly as artillery fire sounded around him. And in the eerie silence between booms that all but confirmed loss of life, Decaul says that he became a writer.
His transformation from soldier to poet and playwright didn’t happen overnight in a foreign land. Years later, in a veterans’ writing workshop, he recorded memories of that day — an attempt to understand what happened and how he felt about it. Finding words to express his emotions made Decaul realize that the experience completely numbed him. “But writing helped me excavate the why of why I went numb,” he explains, going on to say that the process got him “back to being in a place where I could feel again.” See Decaul share this story of resurrection and recite his poem “And The War Was In Its Infancy Then” at the recent Got Your 6 Storyteller event, a campaign that honors and celebrates the talents, skills and leadership of our veterans, in the video above.
In this exclusive interview with NationSwell, Decaul discusses what inspires his service as a veteran and his work as a poet.
What does it mean to be a veteran?
Beyond the technical definition, for me it means being of service to other veterans, especially younger people. A few months ago, I was speaking with a friend who is a veteran of the Army, and we are both writers and we both served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I mentioned to him, for me, because I have been fortunate over the years to be offered great opportunities to write and to create, I now see it as my duty to help those coming after by sharing what I know and contacts and being a mentor.
What inspired you to serve your country?
My family and I are emigrants and one of my earliest memories is seeing a Marine Embassy Guard. After relocating to the United States, I found myself reading a lot about Marines. I remember hearing about the battle of Khafji. I remember hearing about those Recon Marines on a roof calling fire onto occupying troops and the audacity of that…I was hooked, I wanted to be like them.
What 3 words describe your experience in the service?
I served in the Marine Corps and our core values are honor, courage and respect. For me, those words drove the way I tried to behave in and out of uniform. At the core of those words is the notion of integrity — doing what is right, not what is expedient or self-serving. Drill instructors ensure that recruits fortunate enough to graduate and become Marines leave training knowing the importance of our core values and integrity. This is key to maintaining discipline and esprit, and I’ve kept these values in the civilian world.
What is the quality you most admire in a comrade?
Enthusiasm for the work we are doing.
Who are your heroes in real life?
The people who I admire are those who are able to take an idea and go beyond having the idea to making something out of it. I guess, I’m thinking broadly about risk takers. People who aren’t afraid to challenge institutions, thought patterns and naysayers. Entrepreneurial people who are courageous enough to try.
Who was the most inspirational person you encountered while serving?
I served with a Marine named Sgt. Ali while in Iraq in 2003. He was my roommate over there and beyond his general excellence, he knew how to lead. He led by example, understood fairness and is one of the most honorable and courageous Marines I ever knew. I know there were times when he must’ve felt fear, but he was resolute in the face of it. I respected him. I still respect him. I felt honored to serve with him. I would still follow him.
If you could change one thing about your service, what would it be?
I wouldn’t. It’s made me the person I am.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
There isn’t one specific thing, but I know I would’ve regretted not joining the Marines. I’m glad I did, and I am glad I got to serve with great people like Sgt. Ali and many others.
Who is your favorite writer?
I have several writers that I go back to: Yusef Komunyakaa, Yehuda Amichai, Jack Gilbert, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. None of them are more important to me than the others. They inform my work, my thinking. Also, I’ve been fortunate to have exceptional writing teachers such as Edward Hirsch, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Timothy Donnelly and Anne Carson. I love them all, deeply.
What is your favorite topic to write about?
I write about the people forced to make difficult and/or impossible decisions. Sometimes these people are participants in conflict, sometimes not. But I am interested in the ambiguity, the space between right and wrong.
What is your favorite poem?
Jack Gilbert’s “Married” is one of them.
How does your military service impact your writing?
Well, the wars are often the theme, but I am curious about how people in extremis make decisions and how the consequences of those decisions shape their lives.
What is your motto?
There is no right answer
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Homepage photo Courtesy of Got Your 6.
This Resourceful Soldier Goes From Fighting on the Front Lines to Running a Fashion Line
Talking via Skype, Sword & Plough CEO Emily Núñez Cavness held what appeared to be a routine business meeting with her sister and Chief Operating Officer, Betsy Núñez. But when Núñez Cavness, who’d been working remotely for several months, turned to look behind her, the mood suddenly felt very chaotic. Barely out of college, Núñez Cavness said a quick goodbye and hung up. Off camera, she suited up, grabbed some equipment and rushed for cover. An Army officer, Núñez Cavness was stationed in Kandahar, the capital of the former Taliban government in Afghanistan. Her work call had been interrupted by mortar fire.
“It was not the usual start-up location,” Núñez Cavness says.
Most start-ups have stories about their origin that border on the mythic — tales of discontent, intrigue and ambition that are repeated to investors and customers alike. Sword & Plough, which repurposes surplus military gear into stylish bags, makes most Silicon Valley narratives pale in comparison. Yet Núñez Cavness understates the difficulties in her retelling. Listening to her quiet voice, she makes you believe that balancing active duty deployment and entrepreneurship isn’t a tough tightrope to walk and that small business ownership from a combat zone halfway around the globe is common.
Perhaps her nonchalance is because of the scale of the challenges Núñez Cavness wants her company to address. Sword & Plough isn’t just another fashion house, one more Balmain selling military jackets at H&M; instead, she sees the company becoming an “American heritage brand,” supporting 38 jobs for the nation’s 573,000 unemployed veterans, reducing 35,000 pounds from the military’s tons of waste and creating bonds between civilians and soldiers in the process. (It also donates 10 percent of its profits to veterans’ groups.) This mission is almost as ambitious as the Biblical verse her company’s name is derived from — “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” — promising a new era of peace and creation.
Núñez Cavness was born at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where her father taught political science and international relations. Growing up on a base, she remembers hearing that military surplus was burned or buried — a problem she pondered for two decades, until she was a senior at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Inspired by her father, she signed up for the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) at another school, an hour’s drive away in Burlington. Leaving at 6:30 a.m. for weekend training exercises while her classmates slept off hangovers, Núñez Cavness was the only cadet on her liberal arts campus. She often detected hesitation students who didn’t know how to ask her about military service. (An art student, leaving the studio after an all-nighter, once asked her what play she was acting in.) “I would get confused looks walking around campus,” Núñez Cavness recalls. “People didn’t know that I was in R.O.T.C., but I just saw it as an opportunity to strengthen the understanding between the civilian and veteran community.”
While listening to a talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of Acumen (a nonprofit venture capital firm that funds solutions to global poverty) at Middlebury’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Núñez Cavness heard about a company that used recycling in its business model. In that instant, all of her history — the knowledge about what happens to military surplus, any alienation she felt at college and worries about future employment that other soldiers expressed — coalesced.
“What, in my life, I saw wasted on a daily basis could be harnessed and turned into something beautiful. As I looked around, I knew that every student in there had a bag of some form propped up next to them. Why not make durable bags that would be appealing to my classmates, really anyone?” Núñez Cavness remembers. “I was so excited that it was difficult to stay focused on the speech, because all these ideas were running through my mind.”
Núñez Cavness learned what a business plan was (it hadn’t come up in her international studies or French classes) and put one together with her sister. The siblings worked on the business through Núñez Cavness’s senior year, reaching out to contractors who make tents, sleeping bag covers, aircraft insulation, even parachutes. They set up a Kickstarter in April 2013 and asked their friends to buy a bag. Within two hours, they reached their $20,000 goal. By the end of the first day, they tripled that amount and eventually raised $312,000. Clearly, the demand for their product was there, but soon, Sword & Plough’s co-founder wasn’t (Núñez Cavness deployed shortly after graduation) — all while the company suddenly had 1,500 orders to fill.
Núñez Cavness rarely discusses specifics of deployed life with her garment employees, but she warns them when missions will put her out of contact for a few days. For the most part, they know she’s safe, but the occasional loss of internet can lead to anxiety and uncertainty, “this fear of what could have happened or might happen,” says Haik Kavookjian, a college friend who assembled Sword & Plough’s first bags on his mom’s old tabletop sewing machine and now serves as the company’s creative director. Still, her service and her work ethic are inspiring.
“Her ability to multitask and to manage the team while still working for the military, I can only assume comes from her strictly regimented training with the Army,” Kavookjian says. “Especially in the startup space, a lot of times what you find you need is that drive to continue at midnight, finishing work that needs to be done. Her ability to push on and keep going is something that the military has prepared her for.”
There is “a ton of overlap” between roles, Núñez Cavness says. In effect, she serves as CEO of both her domestic business and her military company. She began conducting business meetings based on the same tactics used in military trainings, and she stresses long-term planning, an important aspect of military strategy.
Núñez Cavness’s success could just have easily gone awry. Balancing responsibilities at home with active deployment could help strengthen a soldier’s resilience, but for another service member in the same circumstances, the stress of two jobs could be overwhelming. Founding a business from a military base is a case that’s “unusual though not unheard of,” says Charles Engel, a retired Army colonel who served as a psychiatrist for 31 years and is now a senior health scientist at RAND, a global policy think tank. Many doctors stationed abroad often “moonlighted” on nights and weekends to earn a little extra cash, he says. As long as Núñez Cavness’s superiors checked off on the business, Engel doesn’t see any problems.
“Some people will have the capacity to juggle different things and will even find it stimulating to be challenged in that way. Another person will be rapidly overwhelmed in that kind of circumstance,” Engel says. “What the leadership worries about in the military is that you would have obligations that would come into conflict with jobs in the military, obligations that might prevent you from deploying or otherwise distract you form your work overseas. Your primary job — being a soldier or sailor or airman — that’s the one that takes priority.”
Duty comes first and foremost, Núñez Cavness agrees, but her work with Sword & Plough sometimes helps her remind why she enlisted. One month after she arrived in Afghanistan, she received a big package, sent from a name she didn’t recognize. Inside was a handwritten note from a Vietnam vet, mentioning how impressed he was by Sword & Plough’s commitment to helping veterans. He included black-and-white photos of himself in uniform, on top of some cookies, candy and playing cards. “It was incredibly special and surreal to think — to know — that even there, in the desert in Afghanistan, thousands of miles away, somebody was moved by what we were doing,” Núñez Cavness says.
As Sword & Plough continues to bridge the military civilian divide, it’s likely that this isn’t the only care package Núñez Cavness will receive.
MORE: One Man, His T-Shirts and an Honorable Mission to House Homeless Veterans
Everyone Should Stay Warm During the Winter — Especially America’s Heroes
Excluding Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it can be easy to forget the sacrifices that America’s former military personnel made on our country’s behalf. This winter, a national fuel retailer is stepping up to do something more for veterans, providing savings on an essential utility to help them stay warm.
Suburban Propane, a public company with headquarters in New Jersey and 700 locations in 41 states, is offering a special on the next delivery of 100 gallons or more of gas to households where a veteran or active-duty service member lives. For new customers with military ties, Suburban Propane will take $10 off the bill of their first delivery of 100 gallons or more and comp all charges for the change-out, safety check and the tank’s first year of rent. Existing customers have the opportunity to take advantage of the savings as well; they can receive $10 off the next delivery of 100 gallons or more, and by referring another veteran, they can earn an additional 35 gallons of fuel added to their next order.
Across the country, at least 49,900 veterans sleep on the streets on any given night. The shock of combat can make holding down a job, keeping up with bills and being responsible for other aspects of day-to-day civilian life difficult. Suburban Propane decided to lessen the financial burden on veterans after senior management realized how many of their colleagues had military ties, says Mark Wienberg, the company’s chief development officer.
Of Suburban Propane’s 3,600 employees, “many have family members who are veterans or are veterans themselves. Many have sons or daughters, nieces or nephews who are currently deployed. The head of human resources here is a veteran of the Marines. One guy that managed a local service center and is now overseeing our fleet and tank assets, he’s a military vet,” Wienberg says. The savings offer is “our way of giving back to those who have given for us,” he says.
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And it’s a way to reach veterans as the company ramps up recruiting efforts, offering military personnel employment opportunities. “Many, in their duty to the nation, have performed services that are similar to what we do here, driving major trucks and vehicles,” Wienberg explains. “Someone who comes back from duty could be a service technician, or an officer might run a service center.” The company is currently working with lawmakers on legislation at the state level that would streamline the licensing process for veterans who drove vehicles of a similar class overseas. “We’ll do whatever we can to assist them,” Wienberg stresses.
James Marentette, who was stationed on a Navy aircraft carrier in the 1950s, and his wife Cindy, recently signed up for the deal. The couple, who have a grandson serving in the Air Force, met in church after losing their spouses to cancer and now live together in Crossville, Tenn. Frustrated by their previous gas provider’s poor customer service, they switched to Suburban Propane two years ago at their daughter’s suggestion. The special savings for veterans has helped their pocketbooks, as they rely on fixed income from Social Security and a small pension.
“There is nothing more rewarding than serving your country. Not everyone has that privilege — and I considered it a privilege to do that. To be recognized by a company like Suburban, even in a small way, just means so much to me and so much to all of our friends too,” says Jim. “You get a lot of discounts in restaurants and things like that, but I never heard of a company that supplies utilities to homes helping vets.”
“We think it’s wonderful,” Cindy chimes in, “and we’re so thankful. It makes us feel like people really care.”
The offer is good for one delivery taken by March 31, 2016.
This Competition Tests Veterans, Celebrates Their Resiliency
Redmond “Red” Ramos, a burly and bearded Navy corpsman, stepped on an IED while serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. The explosion ripped through his flesh, causing him to lose his left leg. But the Southern California resident says he felt lucky. He humorously tattooed his right calf “I’m with Stumpy” and compared his injury to a “paper cut.” In Ramos’s mind, his disability is minor. It hasn’t prevented him from being physically active. In fact, he says that it’s made him better. Within seven months of his injury, Ramos won five medals at the Warrior Games, a competition for wounded soldiers, using sports “to destroy the negative stigma associated with injury,” he says.
Last week, Ramos competed with 11 other veterans in the inaugural Triumph Games, a weeklong series of competitions in New York City, participating in a triathalon and obstacle course at LeFrak Center Lakeside in Brooklyn, a videogame event livestreamed at the Times Square Arts Center and a motorsports race upstate. The winner will be revealed on Oct. 17 by former Congressman Patrick Murphy and Al Roker, the Today Show’s weatherman, on NBC Sports Network.
The “Terrific 12” were welcomed to the Big Apple at an opening ceremony just blocks away from One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial. Notables — including Loree Sutton, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, and Damien Sandow, a WWE professional wrestler who goes by the stage name Macho Mandow — praised the warriors for their inspiring stories. The veteran-athletes proved that the well-worn narrative of former service members who are traumatized, crippled, homeless and helpless isn’t necessarily true, reiterating that veterans aren’t victims.
“This is a unique opportunity to showcase what’s great about our American veterans: their resiliency, their competitiveness, their drive and work ethic, and frankly their camaraderie,” Murphy, the first Iraq War veteran elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, tells NationSwell in an interview. It’s difficult for the average American to comprehend “the incredible sacrifice that our military and their family members go through,” adds Murphy, now a lawyer in Pennsylvania. “The Triumph Games bridges that gap in understanding.”
For all the celebration that the games embody, there’s a poignancy in the way these veterans talk about overcoming adversity. Some of them add a reminder to their story: They made it home safely, but not all of their comrades did.
Raised by a military family in Arizona, Sgt. Elizabeth Wasil signed up for the Army in 2008, right after her 17th birthday. On duty as a combat medic in Iraq, she suffered a hip injury that made her lose use of her lower left leg. She got in the pool to rehab and found joy in competitive swimming two years later. Soon, she won a gold medal in the men’s division at the World Military Swimming & Para-Swimming Open. “When my body hurts and I feel as though I can’t push any harder, I remember all of those who no longer have the choice,” Wasil says. For them, she pushes on.
Editors’ note: Patrick Murphy is a NationSwell Council member.
This T-Shirt Could Be the Difference Between a Veteran Having a Home and Living on the Streets
“They had our backs, let’s keep the shirts on theirs” is more than just a motto for Mark Doyle. It’s the business model on which he built Rags of Honor, his veteran-operated business.
Originally a consultant, Doyle was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 as a forensic accountant for the Army. After returning to the U.S., he saw the same men and women who had given their lives for their country struggling to survive. In fact, only one quarter of returning soldiers between the ages of 19 and 25 were employed. Even worse, many were homeless or at risk of losing their homes.
“I could never square when I got back the commitment that they made every day, with the reality of their life when they came home,” Doyle says.
Founded in 2012, Rags of Honor is a silk-screen printing company based in Chicago that provides employment and other services to veterans. In the three years since its inception, Rags of Honor has grown from four employees to 22, all but one of whom are veterans at high risk of homelessness.
To read more about Rags of Honor, click here.
This Veteran Is Giving His Troubled Comrades a (Furry) Reason to Live
Phil Ruddock had trouble adjusting when he returned home to rural Louisiana, disabled by a traumatic brain injury he received during an Air Force tour of duty during Desert Storm. He had all the classic symptoms of PTSD: “I drank all the time, I couldn’t get along with anyone, I kept checking every room in the house to make sure it was clear every time I came home, I got up and checked the locks on the doors and windows too many times to count, I was always depressed and pissed at the world, and I never slept. I drove my family so crazy that they wanted to leave,” he says with a country twang. “I still do some of those things,” he adds, “but it’s getting better.”
Sit. Stay. Lie down. They’re the words that helped him through his recovery.
Ruddock’s now assisting other veterans afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the same way he survived his night terrors and flashbacks — with service dogs. His nonprofit Brothers and Sisters in Arms is a boot camp of sorts based out of central Louisiana, where he’s teaching veterans to train their own service dogs, all adopted from shelters. The repetitive learning of commands works like physical therapy for disabled vets and gives them something to work towards. Once they’ve completed the program, they gain a loyal companion and a sense of accomplishment, “a pride that you can’t imagine,” Ruddock says.
“When a soldier is deployed or on base, they feel secure because they have all the other soldiers there watching their back. But when they are out of the military, when their spouse goes to work, their kids go to school and they’re left alone, they have nobody watching their back,” Ruddock says. “It makes them very anxious, paranoid. A dog turns out to be their battle buddy and watches their back. It never leaves them, it never judges them, it never asks questions that they don’t want to answer. It gives them unconditional love,” Ruddock explains.
A program connecting veterans and rescue dogs may sound cutesy, almost saccharine, but for Ruddock, it’s serious — vital even. He asks the veterans to list Brothers and Sisters in Arms as the primary contact associated with the animal’s microchip, rather than the owner’s home phone. “The suicide rate for veterans is 22 per day,” Ruddock says, about 8,000 every year. “If that dog would show up at a shelter and they ran the microchip, chances are that veteran is not going to answer his phone.”
Ruddock started the nonprofit in November 2012 after his personal experience with an abandoned pit bull. Following a nervous breakdown, he lost his job as lead clerk at the local VA outpatient clinic. His spent his days walled alone up on his remote property, until a friend arrived with a pit bull for him to train. “She was as beat up and as messed up as I was,” he remembers of his white-faced, brown-eared dog, Mia. “She kind of rescued me.” The dog sat in the passenger seat of his truck on rides into a nearby village and eventually gave him confidence to travel farther.
Within the past couple months, Ruddock logged more than 20,000 miles in his sojourns across the Sugar State, from Slidell, a town across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans that butts up against Mississippi, all the way out west to Fort Polk, an Army installation near the Texas border. Last year, he certified 31 service dogs, which are specially licensed after 120 hours in public, and 15 companion dogs.
At the pound, Ruddock seeks out the calmest dogs. “We look for dogs with a good disposition. We don’t want the ones that jump and bark and get with the other dogs,” he says. He generally avoids puppies — too much added stress — and certain breeds like German shepherds that can become overprotective if they’re not socialized regularly, but otherwise he’ll take every breed from a 20-pound Jack Russell terrier to a 200-pound mastiff.
Training sessions run one hour a week for roughly eight weeks, though he’s come to expect a few absences. “A veteran may have problems one day. Some demons may come up and he may not be able to show up. It may take a little longer,” he says.
Besides the essentials — what Ruddock calls good citizenship for canines (think: table manners for children) — the service dogs learn three main commands that are unique for handlers who still carry wounds from the battlefield. The dog learns to “block,” inserting itself into the space between the owner and somebody else so that a person keeps their distance. “Cover” sends the pup to its owner’s back or side, facing away as a kind of lookout that allows a vet to relax at, say, a counter or cash register. The last is “grounded.” If the soldier faints or has a nightmare, the dog lays on top of the owner and licks his face, prompting a welcome (if wet) return to reality.
Brothers and Sisters in Arms is different from many other groups that provide service dogs. For one, Ruddock doesn’t charge for his services or the animal. His operation is funded entirely by donations; the bill from other groups can run as high as $25,000. (“These guys get out of the military, and they’re just above poverty level. They can’t afford that,” he says.) His classes are all one-on-one, making it easier for vets who can be skittish around crowds, nervous about competition and failure. And every instructor is a former soldier, because, as Ruddock says, “There’s no better therapy than a veteran talking to another veteran.”
Ruddock wants to see the program expand across Louisiana. He’s already processing five to 10 applications a week, and he’s starting to get referrals from VA psychiatrists who can’t officially recommend a service dog but still send warriors his way. “It’s not about the fame or fortune. It’s about that feeling you get when you help somebody. The warm fuzzies, the goosebumps, whatever you want to call it,” he says of his motivations. “It’s about doing what’s right.”
It’s for the men and women, his brothers and sisters, that Ruddock keeps trekking across the bayous, working with soldiers, like the young man he met last month. “You can tell he’s had it rough,” Ruddock says. “He couldn’t even stand the sound of a loud car going by. He kept moving around and shaking. He couldn’t look you in the eye. He constantly looked down, and if he did catch your eye, it was a white stare like he could see right through you.” The man expressed no emotion, until Ruddock brought out a puppy. As if he was emerging from a daze, the man started petting the dog. He smiled, and Ruddock knew another soldier was safe.
Watch Our Video Interview with the St. Bernard Project
Husband and wife Zack Rosenburg and Liz McCartney traveled from Washington, D.C. to to New Orleans just a few months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August 2005. Little did they know how the trip would change their lives, inspiring them to start an organization that would help this city and several others rebuild their homes and communities.
In March 2006, the couple launched the St. Bernard Project (SBP), which has gone from a team of three volunteers to a national network of AmeriCorps members who carry out this celebrated model for disaster recovery.
As part of a series of Google Hangouts On Air featuring service opportunities, NationSwell interviewed Rosenburg along with a current SBP fellow and an alum of the program. Click above to watch the full video. The conversation focuses on the work of more than 100,000 St. Bernard Project volunteers across cities including New Orleans, Joplin, Mo.; Staten Island, N.Y.; Rockaway, N.Y; and Monmouth County, N.J.
What do you want to ask the SBP team? Let us know in the comments below or tweet @nationswell using the #serviceyear.
In the meantime, click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities.
The Big Easy’s Challenge to U.S. Cities: House Our Veterans
Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama flew to New Orleans to celebrate their milestone achievement of being the first major U.S. city to end veteran homelessness. In an event with the city’s leaders, Obama said the Big Easy’s success was a call to action for the rest of the country.
“You all have proven that even in a city as big as New Orleans, veteran homelessness is not a reality we have to accept. It’s not an impossible problem that is too big to be solved,” Obama said. “We want cities across this country to follow your lead.”
As we wrote earlier this year, the city at the mouth of the Mississippi River developed several initiatives that proved essential to reducing a spike in homelessness after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. An interagency council on homelessness united approximately 60 agencies under a common banner of ending veteran, chronic and family homelessness. Together, they organized active-duty military personnel into outreach teams to homeless vets and set up a referral center within the VA hospital. Touting “Housing First” and “No Wrong Door” (an initiative that allows for single point access to care), the city witnessed a rapid success: Last year, they housed 227 homeless warriors, surpassing the 193 veterans that had been counted in the previous point-in-time survey.
“To be able to give so many homeless veterans a forever home — most of them disabled and a quarter of them elderly — in such a short period of time was extremely challenging but incredibly exhilarating for all of the many partners in this effort,” Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans, said at the time. “That so many veterans who have risked their lives to serve our country are left homeless, especially in their later years, shocks the conscience. To bring them home, once and for all, has been very rewarding.”
To help other cities accomplish the same goal, the First Lady announced $65 million in HUD and VA funding that will provide rental assistance for 9,300 vets, the same vouchers that helped many New Orleans fund new construction or subsidize rent to landlords. She added that The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm that owns hotel chains like Hilton, Motel 6 and La Quinta Inns and Suites, will partner with 25 cities to furnish homeless soldiers’ new apartments.
“All of us know the hard truth, that this job is never going to end,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said last week. “Tomorrow there is another veteran that will find themselves in a difficult circumstance and is going to need housing.” But now, New Orleans has procedures in place to find those vets and help them transition to housing within an average of 30 days, he added. ”We never leave a soldier on the battlefield, and we certainly never leave a soldier on the streets of America.”
Watch: Building a Better Government for the 21st Century
Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director of Code for America, a non-partisan group that works to bridge the gap between public and private usage of technology, looks at government as a platform in need of a relaunch.
At SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, Pahlka held a session called “How Government Fails and How You Can Fix It.” She and Mikey Dickerson, who left Google to save the day at the White House, explained, for example, how the U.S. Digital Service changed millions of lives by addressing the problems that plagued the Healthcare.gov launch.
Code for America “believes government can work for the people, by the people in the 21st century.” Through its fellowship — a service year model — the nonprofit organization places designers and developers within local governments to apply their problem solving and app building skills to make government work.
The group brought its message on why government must become competent, or even excellent, at digital to SXSW, with Code for America designers leading a separate SXSW session on urban planning tools.
Pahlka, a former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, recently left the beltway and returned to the Bay Area, where she is working to figure out what is next for this “Peace Corps for geeks.” SXSW provided a preview of what’s to come, but to learn more, watch our Google Hangout on Air to continue the conversation with Code for America. This is part of a series of live interviews featuring service opportunities — a way to raise awareness to the mission of the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is to mobilize a million young people to serve.
The video interview features Molly McLeod, who describes herself as a graphic designer and civic hacker who saves “good causes from bad design,” Alex Soble, who led digital projects at Chicago Public Schools before working with the city of Somerville, Mass., on education, and Nicole Neditch, Code for America fellowship director.
Tune in by watching the video above then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities.