Tag: Georgia

How to Ease the Move from Battlefield to Boardroom

Posted on by robbie

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.”

MORE: Can You 3D Print A Car? This Program Trains Veterans How

 

The New Way for Citizens to Report the Actions of Law Enforcement

Posted on by robbie

In today’s world, it seems almost impossible to separate teenagers from their phones. But while most spend hours and hours checking out social media sites or playing games, some are using the power of technology to inspire change.
Enter Five-O, the new app that allows users to document police abuse in order to create a community base for problem-solving. It’s inspired by the new wave of police violence reported in the news — particularly the continued unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
While an app like this is certainly a new phenomenon, the inventors behind it are even more unlikely: three teenagers from Georgia. Fourteen-year-old Caleb Christian, and his two sisters Ima, 16, and Asha, 15, have always had an interest in coding. After attending MIT’s k12 Scratch and App Inventor program, the three siblings continued to delve into the coding world, learning JavaScript, HTML, CSS and Java — making the programming of the app a breeze.
The process is just as simple for users. Once you’ve download the app, all you do is submit a detailed report on any case of alleged police abuse and rate the officer.
Then the community steps in. The app has county community boards where users can discuss and attempt to solve the problem. Those potential solutions can then be brought to community activists, the media or other forms of law enforcement.
For the Christian siblings, that is the whole point of the app — to find a solution to inspire change.
“We’ve been hearing about the negative instances in the news, for instance most recently the Michael Brown case, and we always talk about these issues with our parents,” Ima told Business Insider. “They always try to reinforce that we should focus on solutions. It’s important to talk about the issues, but they try to make us focus on finding solutions. That made us think why don’t we create an app to help us solve this problem.”
It’s important to note, however, is that this isn’t an app designed purely to rate negative run-ins with the cops; it’s also meant as a place to document the police officers doing positive work. The app welcomes encouraging stories about police actions to act as motivation for the other officers or serve as examples.
The app became available for download two days ago for both Apple and Android devices.
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MORE: When Communication Barriers Prevented Coworkers from Talking, Goodwill Provided Language Lessons for All
 

After a Family Tragedy, This Woman Sold Everything and Hit the Road to Volunteer

Posted on by robbie

Once the kids are raised, some moms plan to enjoy a bit of well-deserved free time. But Carol Harr didn’t view her empty nest as a chance to relax. Instead, after raising her daughters in Centennial, Colorado and retiring from the state’s labor department, she decided to sell her home and become a full-time roving volunteer.
The 64-year-old Harr sold or donated almost all of her possessions, keeping just a few things in a storage unit. The remainder fit in her car, which she has driven to Florida, Georgia, and back to Colorado on volunteering missions for The Catholic Worker Movement, a social justice charity serving the poor, and World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms (WWOOF), an organization that connects volunteers with organic farmers.
The radical change in lifestyle from settled mom to nomadic volunteer was prompted by a personal tragedy. Five years ago, one of Harr’s daughters gave birth to a baby girl who died after living for less than a day. “It was a real awakening for me,” Harr told Claire Martin of the Denver Post. “I’d been living my life for the future, spending my time cleaning up from last week and getting ready for next week. I took an ecumenical class called ‘Just Faith,’ about social justice, and began learning about living in community.”
Harr lives off her state pension while staying in housing provided by the various charities she volunteers with or with friends. Now that she’s back in Colorado on a WWOOF post, she’s staying with couple in Denver who agreed to host a volunteer.
Harr’s current post lasts through October, and for her next project, she’s invested in a plan to band together with others to create a co-housing community on the site of a former Denver convent — a good base for her plan of living light and volunteering.
Harr’s daughter Kati Harr told the Post, “I loved my childhood home so much, (but) even more important than my nostalgia is actively supporting my mom’s innate and deeply rooted desire to help her community and fellow beings. I really feel the route to happiness is walking within your values, living in a way that upholds the things you hold to be the most dear. My mom is a shining example of this. I am so lucky and blessed to be her daughter.”
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Can Living in a City Give You a Leg Up in Life?

Posted on by robbie

We’ve been hearing for years that people who live in cities tend to be thinner and more active than those who live in suburbs—all that walking and climbing stairs seems to contribute—but a new study finds that people who live in densely-packed cities also are more likely to be agile in a different way: climbing the economic and social ladder.
The study by Smart Growth America and the University of Utah’s Metropolitan Urban Center is significant because it quantifies urban sprawl. Sprawl is not just about how much land is occupied by a city. As the authors write, “sprawl is not just growth, but is a specific, and dysfunctional, style of growth.” The study shows that the health benefits that correlate with city living are specific to dense cities, where residents have lower rates of obesity and diabetes. Residents of sprawled-out cities such as Atlanta do not show the same benefits as do those living in packed-in places such as New York.
Reid Ewing of the University of Utah, lead researcher on the study, told Lane Anderson of Deseret News, “Urban places provide higher likelihood of moving up the social ladder. Compact places provide better access to jobs, better transit and more integration.” The study judged Los Angeles to be relatively dense compared to Atlanta and other sprawling places, and found that a child in L.A. has a 10 percent chance of moving from the bottom of the income scale to the top, while an Atlanta-based low-income child has only a 4 percent of chance of such a rise.
Ewing said that one factor in this difference might be transportation—denser cities tend to have better public transportation, which gives citizens of all income levels more access to better jobs and schools, but is especially important for low-income people who may not have a car. Better mixing between people of different ethnicities and economic levels might contribute to the social mobility, too. “In dense areas, there are more chances for networking, for meeting people, more chances of getting better salaries and jobs,” he said. And riding the train also seems to keep people thinner—train riders are 6.5 pounds lighter than car drivers, according to The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and they’re 81 percent less likely to ever become obese. One twist: the study found that kids get more exercise in the suburbs where they can run around in backyards and playgrounds, and adults get more exercise in cities, where they are forced to hoof it.
The authors of the study hope their findings will encourage more cities to implement healthy changes, such as bike-share programs, more mixed-use developments, and improved transportation. Or, as Ewing asks, “It’s time to ask the question again, how can we make cities better?”
MORE: More College Graduates Moving Into Cities

Meet the Musicians Helping Veterans Write Their Own Country Songs

Posted on by robbie

Everyone’s heard the old joke about what you get when you play a country song backwards: You get your truck back, you get your dog back, and you get your wife back.
Some Nashville musicians hoped their efforts would be more uplifting than reversing a sad song when they recently teamed up with veterans in Columbus, Georgia to write country songs — often about painful experiences these vets have been carrying with them since their service.
The participants included Bob Regan, who has written such songs as “Busy Man” by Billy Ray Cyrus and “Thinkin’ About You” by Trisha Yearwood, and Tim Maggart, a singer-songwriter and Army veteran himself. These two, in addition to  other musicians, first spent time getting to know the vets, then collaborated on a song about their life before performing the songs around a campfire at the Warrior Outreach retreat.
Don Goodman, who wrote several songs for Lee Greenwood including “Ring on Her Finger, Time on Her Hands,” and “Angels Among Us” by Alabama, told Dante Renzulli of WTVM that the vets’ songs all tell different personal stories. “Sometimes it’s a story about their car, their truck, their girlfriend, their mom, their dad. They get things out that they want to say to them, but they can’t. But when we get in there, playing the guitar, and get caught up in the music, they let go of demons that they’ve been carrying around for years. I just worked with a man who fought in Vietnam who let go of a demon he’d been carrying fifty years. He finally told another human being what was killing him. And from that day on, his life has changed, and that was more important to me than any number one song I’ve ever written.”
Now that sounds like a song worth singing.
MORE: Writing Helps Veterans Go From Victims to Victors
 
 

Meet the Georgians Putting Energy-Efficient Roofs Over Injured Vets’ Heads

Posted on by robbie

Hardwood floors appeal to many homeowners. They’re attractive, durable, and easy to clean. But for wounded veterans, hardwood floors are often a necessity.
That’s because the smooth surface of hardwood floors makes getting around in a wheelchair less cumbersome. So in Calhoun, Georgia, an army of handymen is providing its services free of charge to injured veterans. Nine thousand employees of Mohawk Flooring in northern Georgia will work — free of charge — on homes that Building for America’s Bravest is custom designing for wounded veterans.
Building for America’s Bravest is a project sponsored by the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a non-profit formed after 9-11 to honor Siller, a 34-year-old firefighter and father of five who died trying to save people in the World Trade Center. Its goal: To build 50 custom “Smart Homes” for servicemen and women across the country who are severely disabled and to do it in an energy-efficient way — all while making use of the latest adaptive technologies, such as automated lighting, wider doors to accommodate wheelchairs, and iPad-controllable heating systems.
One recipient of a smart home is Corporal Todd Love, whose house is now under construction in Georgia. Love lost three limbs (both legs and one arm) when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan in 2010. He’s appreciative of the work that the volunteers are putting into building his house: “You can provide a great service for your country without being in the military of being a firefighter or police officer,” he told Kimberly Barbour of WRCB. “[I’m] Looking forward to getting a home and one that’s accessible and hopefully I’ll have it for the rest of my life.”
MORE: This Documentarian is Filming Incredible Vets and Helping Them at the Same Time
 
 
 

One Community’s Special Valentine’s Day Treat for Its Female Vets

Posted on by robbie

Army veteran Watha Alston-Hooper, of Augusta, Ga., thought female vets deserved a special treat for Valentine’s Day. So, as the commander of the Women’s Veterans Club of the CSRA (Central Savannah River Area), a group that helps women transition back into civilian life, she organized a spa day for fellow female vets.
This month, women gathered at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 649 to receive massages, facials, sweet treats and makeup tips from volunteers. Just as important as the beauty treatments was the chance for the veterans to bond with other women who could relate to their military experience, a goal the Women’s Veterans Club of the CSRA takes as its mission.
Army veteran Mary Smith Tyler, who doesn’t usually wear makeup but was happy to try it on at the event, told Nicole Snyder of WJBF, “We should be appreciated. There are so few woman and so many men in the military, so to have a day that’s about me—I’m honored. I’m glad. It is a male dominated field, so I do feel like women do get forgotten about a lot in this field, but today we are not… and I love it.”
MORE: This Paralyzed Veteran Can Hunt and Fish Again, Thanks to the Generosity of His Community

What Looks Like a Birdhouse and Promotes Literacy?

Posted on by robbie

In 2009, Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisc., had a brilliant idea to honor his mother, a bookworm and retired schoolteacher: He built a small model of a one-room school house, filled it with books, and stuck it on a pole in his yard with a sign that said “Free Books.” His little library became so popular that Bol built more and gave them to people to install in their yards. Eventually he teamed up with Rich Brooks of the University of Wisconsin, who had an idea to turn this effort into something much grander—a way to promote literacy nationwide, give people access to free books in communities where they’re hard to come by, and encourage more reading. They initially set a goal of building 2,509 of these birdhouse-like “Little Free Libraries,” the same number of  libraries that Andrew Carnegie supported at the turn of the 19th century. But in the past five years, they’ve far exceeded their hopes. As of this month, Little Free Library counts between 10,000 and 12,000 registered small libraries across the world, with more built every month.

On its website, Little Free Library offers instructions on how to build and maintain libraries using recycled materials, and for the less-handy, it sells libraries that are already built and ready to install.

Every year, more people and organizations become involved in the Little Free Library movement. For example, The United Way of Northwest Georgia recently undertook a project to build and install 25 little libraries, inspired by member Carey Mitchell’s outsized book collection that he wanted to share with others. While Little Free Library warns people not to install libraries in public places without permission, communities throughout northwest Georgia have embraced the idea, and 25 libraries will soon be installed in public parks and areas. Now they’re just looking for a few volunteers to help maintain the libraries, keeping them clean and stocked with books. Especially in towns where bookstores have closed or libraries are distant, these little beacons of literature are welcome additions to the landscape.

Students Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Vocational Education and College Prep

Posted on by robbie

Traditional technical education can do a lot of good for students, but it’s often stigmatized for neglecting college-prep and locking kids into one job. But Georgia high schools’ new Pathway program features big improvements. All students in the program choose an academically-focused path, and participate in electives, college preparatory courses, and career exploration. The courses in the program challenge students to develop problem-solving skills as they earn industry certifications through a hybrid model. At Dalton High School in Dalton, Georgia, students work with 3D-printers, welding equipment, and computer-controlled machinery. The program makes academic and economic sense, and it’s a great way to prepare students simultaneously for the workforce and higher education.