I never served in the military. And yet I find myself helping those who did serve, every day.
That’s not by coincidence.
I grew up in a military family where pride, honor and service were all part of our ethos. Our license plate says “Oorah”; my first stuffed animal was a bulldog. Military is very much part of who we are. My father was a Vietnam veteran, and though he didn’t speak much about those days, you could tell he thought back on that time with incredible fondness. I wanted something like that. To be part of something bigger than myself.
Whenever any one of us left the house, my mother always used to remind us, “Remember who you are.” It was a constant reminder that we were representing the values and strength that military families must have.
So serving was something I was expected to do, and it’s something I wanted for myself. Which is why when it came to going to college, I’m sure it was odd for my father — a 26-year veteran — to hear that I would be not attending a military academy or even registering to be in any branch of the military.
Instead I had an incredible opportunity to play soccer at school, which tore at my heart. Would I be letting down my family? Is this not the opposite of how I was raised?
My father calmed me down and told me something that I would never forget, and that I carry to this day. He said, “Meghan, go to school and get a great education. You’ll find your way to service. Go be the best you can be.”
And I did. I eventually found my way into finance at Lehman Brothers in 2005 and moved my way up the corporate ladder. But a few years and thousands of layoffs later, I stopped and had to ask myself what I was doing — was this really the service I was meant to do?
Service is meant to be selfless. My father talked about his time in service not with pride for himself, but with pride for his peers. But at some point in everyone’s time of service, there’s a realization that whatever help you’re giving often ends up bettering your life too. And I just wasn’t feeling that with where I was.
It was around that time when I was approached by a friend who told me about a one-armed Jesuit priest named Father Rick Curry who wanted to start a nonprofit for veterans in Washington, D.C. I just had to meet him.
I sat down with Father Curry for a whole weekend, and he sold me on this vision he had, built around men and women veterans who — unlike the people in the movies, broken and desperate — have a variety of different voices and talents, despite their physical or mental ailments acquired while serving.
And with that, he and his co-founder created Dog Tag Bakery, a space that utilizes veterans as employees, but also offers classes and the support to start an entrepreneurial venture of their own. I joined as their first employee in 2012.
I would never say I’m at the same level of my father, sister or mom. But I’ve helped establish a program that has a culture of acceptance and offers wraparound services to vets. It’s not about running a bakery — it’s about running the best bakery.
And this isn’t just about doing something good for people. This is about doing good business. We’re seeing an economic impact. Change doesn’t always happen on a national level; it happens on a small level in our communities every day. I think that there’s no greater calling than that.
Tag: Employing Veterans
3 Vet-Focused Companies Helping Soldiers Adjust to Civilian Life
Most people have switched jobs at least once, but transitioning out of the military is an experience most civilians can’t fully understand. To soften the transition, many veteran-run organizations step in to make the process easier. Here are three organizations that epitomize comradeship.
VETERANS TO FARMERS, DENVER
The nonprofit Veterans to Farmers grows more than plants. The Denver-based organization uses agriculture to help vets reintegrate into civilian life, one lettuce patch at a time. They offer eight-to-10-week training programs in hydroponics, aquaponics and in-soil farming at no cost to veterans who apply — some may even qualify for a stipend.
“We have every background of veteran,” says Rich Murphy, co-founder and executive director. “Some want to grow food for family, some want to learn about agriculture, and some show up for no reason.”
In 2013, Murphy, a third-generation U.S. Air Force veteran who had served in Security Forces for five years, was building a career as a social worker in Denver. There, he met Buck Adams, a former Marine, who had the idea to hire vets to work at his greenhouse. With interest in urban farming and homesteading, Murphy didn’t hesitate to shift gears, and he and Adams co-founded Veterans to Farmers. “We knew that combining veterans and farming could have huge positive impacts for both communities,” he says.
The positive effects of getting one’s hands dirty are real. Take Eli, who served in both the Army and the Marines before being dishonorably discharged after a mental breakdown. Because of his mental and physical disabilities, he was struggling to adjust to civilian life. He heard about the program online and drove from Kentucky to Colorado.
“He was dealing with PTSD and there was an individual war inside him,” says Murphy. After completing two courses, Eli enrolled in college and was able to have his dishonorable discharge adjusted into an honorable one. He still gardens and now owns five acres.
“It takes energy to go after what you need,” adds Murphy. “We have to get these people engaged, to hang out in the field, planting, reintegrating.”
Five years and more than 100 veteran-graduates later, the organization isn’t slowing down. It is currently building another 3,000-square-foot greenhouse in Fort Collins, Colorado, and launching a homesteading course that will include beekeeping as well as chicken and hog care.
HOMEFRONT ROOM REVIVAL, GOLDSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA
Hardships in the military are not just for the enlisted. While life in the armed forces is marked by a nomadic nature, spouses and families can have a hard time settling into their communities. To combat that sense of isolation, Homefront Room Revival aims to boost morale through purposeful custom home projects across North Carolina.
“People think that you’re always going to move out,” says founder and executive director Katelyn Tinsley. “So you never really move in.” Homefront Room Revival wants to change that by helping military families find a comfort in the “chaos of military life.”
Tinsley knows what it’s like to feel lonely and unenthused about her home. After almost five years as a mental health tech for the Air Force, she found out that she was pregnant with a second child shortly after her husband was deployed.
“Chasing my 1-year-old and coming home to an empty house gave me anxiety,” she says. She started decorating to make herself feel better — transforming her space into a home filled with thrift-store pieces and flea market finds — which helped her get her bearings during a tough time.
This gave her an idea: bring joy to others, one redecorated room at a time. Tinsley started picking up home décor projects for friends, and eventually launched Homefront Room Revival in 2016. The program relies on volunteers — currently that includes more than 200 service members and spouses — as well partnerships with Habitat for Humanity and the local arts council.
Not only does the organization help families settle into their homes, but it provides a creative outlet for its volunteers and upcycles furniture that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Last December, Homefront Room Revival launched Dec’ the Deployment, focusing on holiday decorations. The team spruced up eight homes, including one with a newborn whose mom “just didn’t have the energy” to put up a tree because her husband was deployed.
Tinsley sees the project as an important way to support military families. “It’s a unique way to get people involved and have that personal connection of [having] outreached to those who wouldn’t be touched otherwise.”
GREEN EXTREME HOMES CDC, GARLAND, TEXAS
A house is something many of us often take for granted, but for veterans, homes play an important role in their integration back to civilian life. Veteran homelessness is a serious problem. The National Alliance to End Homelessness finds that there are more than 40,000 homeless veterans — almost 10 percent of all homeless adults.
Green Extreme Homes CDC in Garland, Texas, is a nonprofit providing homes that are discounted as much as 50 percent to veterans and their families, and the homes themselves are anything but ordinary. The concept is simple: take old, drafty houses and completely gut them into not merely energy-efficient homes, but into Zero Energy Ready Homes — a Department of Energy program that applies rigorous coding standards to new homes, with the requirement that they’re at least 40–50 percent more energy efficient than a typical new home.
“We are way above current codes and next current codes,” says Steve Brown, builder and president of Green Extreme Homes CDC, adding that their construction standards are more aligned to home guidelines for the year 2030. Each house they remodel features optimized plumbing, solar power hookups, efficient insulation and Energy Star appliances, which can translate into utility bills of around $2 dollars a day.
To create these eco-centric and affordable homes, Green Extreme Homes CDC teams up with volunteers from local veteran coalitions and corporate initiatives, including Citi, which has collaborated with the nonprofit since 2011.
The team is currently working on a seven-bedroom group home in Lewisville, Texas, for women veterans with or without children.
“Right now, there are 97 women veterans living in Dallas-area shelters,” says Jean Brown, executive director of Green Extreme Homes CDC, whose family boasts four generations of veterans. “We can take in 15 to 20 female vets and provide them a home and a nurturing environment. There is no time limit for how long they can stay [in order] to get back on their feet.”
The group home, which will have a hydroponics system to help the women grow their own food, is in early development. As the project progresses, the team, including a small army of Citi volunteers, will work together on everything from landscaping to furniture assembly in preparation for the grand finale next spring.
“It starts with housing,” Brown says. “Once you have a roof over your head you can find employment and mentoring.”
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This article was paid by and produced in partnership with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veterans’ service organizations and leading veterans’ champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the fifth installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.
Correction: A previous version of this article featured outdated information on Homefront Room Revival’s volunteer count and partnerships. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
The Number of Farmers Is Dropping. So How Will the U.S. Continue to Feed the World?
According to last year’s report on agriculture from the U.S. Census, the American farmer is aging. The percentage of farmers and ranchers over the age of 75 grew by 15.1 percent between 2007 and 2012, while the number of farmers and ranchers under the age of 54 decreased by 16.1 percent during the same time period.
Several programs are trying to entice veterans into the agricultural field, while the AgrAbility Project, which helps older and disabled farmers gain various forms of assistance, is helping existing farmers to plant, shepherd and harvest longer.
In Colorado, the program enables Dean Wierth to tend to his herd of goats in Park County, despite his declining balance and vision. Using an electric cart, he is able to feed and tend to the livestock living on the 40 acres he owns, plus the additional 40 acres he leases.
“It’s been a godsend. My balance was just about gone,” he tells the Denver Post about the AgrAbility program.
For 16 years, Goodwill Industries and Colorado State University have run the AgrAbility program in Colorado, helping 538 farming and ranching families during that time. Recently, the federal government kicked in $720,000 to fund the program for four more years.
Wierth, a disabled Vietnam veteran himself, is now pitching in to start a facility that will teach veterans how to farm and ranch. South Park Heritage Association and the Wounded Warrior USA Outreach Program are currently raising funds to purchase land for the program.
Robert Fetsch, co-director of the Colorado AgrAbility Project says, “Most farmers and ranchers don’t retire; they just keep on keeping on as long as they can. Our best course for now is to help them stay active and working, so they can continue to thrive, remain independent and be loyal taxpayers in their communities.”
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How Can One Nonprofit Solve Two Big Problems Facing Both Veterans and Low-Income Kids?
Bob Kincaid, co-founder of the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Get Veterans Involved (GVI), has found that it’s possible to kill two birds with one stone. His nonprofit helps two groups — veterans who struggle when they return from service, and elementary school kids in need of mentors — at the same time.
How is that possible?
While veterans train for new jobs or attend college, the organization pays them to visit local elementary schools each week.
“They’ve got no mission. No purpose. The hope is to give them purpose,” Kincaid tells the Times Free Press. “If we can have these service members recognize these kids need them, we have a mission for them.”
Kincaid believes the program, which kicked off in five elementary schools this year, will help veterans feel connected to their community as they work to make a smooth transition into civilian life. Additionally, the work will help low-income kids in innumerable ways. “We mentor the kids, who then mentor the vets,” he adds.
Instead of having the vets come to the schools with a lesson to teach or a talk to give, GVI instructs them to simply help out in whatever way the classroom teachers need them to. One basic task the veterans assist with at Calvin Donaldson Elementary, for example, is helping kindergartners learn their ABCs.
Principal Cherrye Robertson says, “Right now all of my kindergartners know all of their letters, which is phenomenal. We’ve never had all the kindergartners in the whole building know all their letters at this time of year.”
With early successes, GVI is aiming to expand through funding and donations. GVI co-founder Ron White says, “The vision is for this one day to be in school districts around the country.”
MORE: For Female Veterans Experiencing Employment Woes, This Organization Offers Strong Advice
Buy a T-Shirt, Help a Veteran
Mark Doyle didn’t know a thing about screen-printing t-shirts but that didn’t stop him from starting Rags of Honor, a Chicago-based t-shirt company dedicated to hiring homeless and chronically unemployed veterans.
Doyle now works as the director of Prairie Community Bank in Marengo, Ill., as well as the football coach at St. Pat’s High School in Chicago. But back in 2010, he was hired to help the U.S. Army investigate financial corruption in Afghanistan. While there, he was struck by the dedication of the service members and also by the fact that a lot of money was being spent on foreign aid, while relatively little was dedicated to helping struggling veterans back home.
So Doyle started Rags of Honor, a company that pays its veteran employees a living wage to produce a variety of patriotic and pro-Chicago t-shirts, as well as orders of custom-printed shirts. Rags of Honor trains workers even if they have no related experience and provides them benefits and opportunities for advancement.
The company has been a lifesaver for Navy veteran Tamika Holyfield. “I did two years and a half at the Bartons Air Base in Afghanistan,” she tells Ravi Baichwal of ABC 7 Chicago. “I returned to hardship and turmoil. I didn’t have a place to live, so I was basically living out of my car.”
The same was true for Frank Beamon III, who served as a machine gunner in Afghanistan, but found that his experience there counted for little with employers when he returned home to the Windy City. Both Holyfield and Beamon ended up homeless.
“The day I told them they were hired, they started crying on the spot,” Doyle tells Baichwal. “These are grown men and women. So never underestimate what just a job can mean to somebody who has no hope.”
For those who might think that they don’t have the power to reach out and help veterans, “You don’t have to be the President,” Doyle says. “You don’t have to start Google. Make a difference in the lives immediately around you. Give somebody hope. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we do, one t-shirt at a time. If I can leave anybody with anything, give somebody hope today.”
MORE: For Homeless Veterans, Gardening Can Be the Therapy That Gets Them Back on Their Feet
The Start-Up That’s Recruiting 50,000 Military and Veteran Drivers
Uber, the ride-sharing company founded in San Francisco in 2009, noticed something interesting about the ratings its drivers received: Those earning the most accolades were often military members or veterans. Additionally, current and former military member drivers tended to make more trips than civilian drivers through Uber.
These findings sparked a new initiative announced last week: UberMILITARY, an effort to recruit 50,000 veterans, military members and their spouses to become Uber drivers over the next 18 months. Representatives from the company will visit veteran job fairs, offer recruitment bonuses and waive city fees and deposits for veterans.
Uber runs a background check on its driver applicants, and then if they pass, puts them through an online training course. Additionally, it provides financing to its drivers to buy a new car or lets them drive their own car. Uber takes a 20 percent cut of the driver’s gross earnings (the drivers pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance themselves).
Some have pointed out that earning a lot of money through Uber requires working a very long week, but the benefit for military members might be the flexibility. Drivers can work when they want and as much or as little as they want — making it a reasonable gig for someone who is attending school, has a spotty job record (as some military spouses do due to multiple moves) or might be called up to active duty with little notice.
Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense, is serving as the volunteer chairman of the Ubermilitary advisory board. He and Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO, write in Politico, “Too often, businesses do not have a clear understanding of how service members’ skills might translate to the civilian workplace. UberMILITARY is a reflection that high-quality service, an unparalleled commitment to safety and the leadership potential inherent to small business entrepreneurship are values shared by those who have selflessly served our country.”
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When Veterans Need Jobs, This Industry Offers Plenty
Each year, more than 300,000 service members leave the military and seek employment in the civilian world, yet the unemployment rate remains higher for new veterans than it does for the general population. In May, the unemployment rate was 6.8 percent for post-September 11th veterans compared with 5.7 percent for everyone else.
Which begs the question: why?
Part of the problem is that companies often don’t know how skills gained in the military will translate to their business. But there’s one line of business that doesn’t have any doubt about the benefit of military skills: the oil and gas industry, which has boomed in recent years due to oil-shale fracking.
Several programs across the country are assisting veterans in the transition from active duty to employment with oil and gas companies. According to Madasyn Czebiniak of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when 30-year-old Army veteran John MacZura recently graduated from Penn State with a degree in petroleum engineering, he had a half dozen job offers and now works as a completions engineer for Cabot Oil and Gas.
The G.I. Bill assisted MacZura with his tuition, and he started at a high-level position in the industry. But for those who can’t hack an engineering degree, there are plenty of other jobs for vets. “I had friends who started out as welders and roustabouts, worked their way up, and after they got trained they were placed into every day field jobs,” MacZura tells Czebiniak.
Programs helping veterans learn skills for oil and gas industry jobs include Austin-based Retrain America, which aims to help blue-collar workers and veterans train for high-paying jobs and ShaleNET, which launched in 2010 when the oil and gas industry needed more skilled workers than it could get.
Dave Pistner, who directs energy initiatives at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport (a school that offers a training program for veterans seeking to enter the oil and gas industry), says, “The traits that the military imparts on the men and women — loyalty, courage, safety, commitment, leadership, teamwork — are all valued by employers in this industry. It’s a natural fit for our troops leaving active service.”
MORE: When America’s Heroes Can’t Find Employment, This Program Trains Them to Be Wilderness Firefighters
How to Ease the Move from Battlefield to Boardroom
Retired Lt. Col. John Phillips of Atlanta, Ga. knows a few things about making the transition from a military career to a civilian one. After he served for more than 20 years in the Army, he began to work for Coca-Cola, where he is currently a mid-level finance executive and the founder of the beverage company’s Military Veterans Business Resource Group. Earlier this year, he published a book, Boots To Loafers: Finding Your New True North, to help those recently retired from the service make a similar career move.
Phillips discussed with Bill Hendrick of the Atlanta Journal Constitution some of the tips he shares in the book. “Always remember you know more than you think you do,” he says. “Also, if you’ve been the service a long time and been successful, you’ll likely have to work at first for someone half your age and who has no idea what you’ve done, and doesn’t care.”
Phillips outlines the three phases he believes each veteran will experience as he or she leaves military life: Transition, transformation, and integration.
One goal of the book is to build veterans’ confidence in their abilities to solve the less-than-dire problems they will face in the corporate world. Phillips writes on his website, “Many times in my civilian career I have come across a crisis, or what others perceived as a crisis, that did not compare to the catastrophes I experienced while in uniform. For example, no one has yelled at me, shot at me, or tried to blow me up since leaving the military. Instead, someone has simply spent too much money and is over budget or someone has not served the kind of soup expected in the company cafeteria and that turns into an instant crisis for some in the private sector.”
Phillips advises vets seeking jobs to start their job searches with vet-friendly companies, study the corporate culture of the business they are applying to and learn how to explain that the skills they built in the military will be useful in a civilian job.
“The people listening may not have a clue,” Phillips tells Hendrick. “And they might look at a resume for about three seconds. So you’ve got to spell out what you can do for them.”
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For Companies Unsure About How to Find the Right Vets to Hire, a New Website Has the Answers
Most employers have a pretty good idea about how to find recent college graduates to hire: running an internship program or visiting university job fairs are two great ways. But when businesses want to hire veterans — to gain good employees and to do their part to lower the veteran unemployment rate — some of them don’t know where to begin. But that’s about to change.
Recently, the website Employer Roadmap launched to help answer employers’ questions about hiring vets and their spouses and to connect veterans with businesses looking for specific skills.
The website, a joint project of Hiring Our Heroes and USAA, went live during a Veterans Jobs Summit at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg. Kathryn Dill of Forbes spoke to Eric Eversole, the executive director of Hiring Our Heroes and the vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about what Employer Roadmap aims to accomplish: “There’s really no one-size-fits-all approach to helping companies recruit, hire, and retain veteran talent,” Eversole said. “This allows businesses to self-asses, and then we can deliver more customizable solutions.”
Part of the website’s mission is to educate employers on such matters like why hiring veterans’ spouses can still be a good idea — despite the fact that they often have gaps in their resumes brought on by frequent moves. Employer Roadmap also includes resources about how to recruit and train veterans and encourages employers to get to know the veterans already working for them and ask for their assistance in recruiting more service members.
While some larger companies are able to launch their own initiatives to train and hire veterans (think: Microsoft, Tesla, and General Motors), smaller companies might not have the resources to set up such a program. And that’s where Employer Roadmap comes in.
Army veteran Geoff Grant, USAA program director, told Dill, “Small to medium sized businesses say, ‘I don’t have this huge HR budget, what do I do to hire one or two vets? Where do I find them?’ That’s where the best practices tool is really key.”
Of the estimated 1.5 million veterans that are expected to join the civilian workforce in the next five years, we’re sure that many of them will find employment, thanks to Employer Roadmap.
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Instead of Letting Veterans Struggle Post Service, GM Trains Them for Dealership Employment
Many Army veterans know a thing or to about maintaining vehicles. And if they can keep a tank running smoothly, fixing a car should be a piece of cake, right?
That’s what General Motors and Raytheon think, which is why the two companies are teaming up with the U.S. Army to offer veterans jobs in car dealerships. According to David Shepardson of The Detroit News, GM has more car lots than any other auto maker in the U.S. — 4,300 of them, to be exact — and the company estimates it’ll need 2,500 technicians to staff them in the coming years. And with the Army planning to reduce its size from 574,000 to 450,000, there will be thousands of veterans looking for good jobs.
So kicking off this month at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, is the 12-week-long Shifting Gears: Automotive Technician Training Program. In order for Army members to obtain the skills needed to gain a civilian job before they’re discharged, the Raytheon-developed program is held on the base. GM pays for the training and connect graduates from it to jobs in their dealerships across the country.
Lynn Dugle, president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, says, “Young Army veterans face unemployment rates that are more than double the national average. Raytheon sees this partnership with GM and the Army as an opportunity to reduce those alarming statistics by helping position former service members for new opportunities.”
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Howard Bromberg, deputy chief of staff for personnel, said at the Pentagon event, “Soldiers transitioning to civilian life bring exceptional training, values and experience to American communities and their civilian workforce. Properly supporting our veterans requires a team approach from the Army, other government agencies and the local community.”
Along with GM and Raytheon, more and more companies, including Tesla and Microsoft, are stepping up to help veterans transition into civilian jobs. Here’s to hoping that this assistance continue to trend.
MORE: This Innovative Car Company Aims to Hire More Veterans