When service members separate or retire from the military, more than 45,000 nonprofits, thousands of public agencies, and countless other organizations and individuals aim to support their transitions back to civilian life. This series explores how communities are collaborating across public, private, business, and social sectors to better connect the systems that serve veterans. This principle is called “collective impact.” The subjects featured are all members of National Veterans Intermediary (NVI) Local Partner collaboratives. Laura Whitfield joined the Marines right out of high school. While stationed in Tokyo, she earned a bachelor’s degree and worked as a broadcast journalist, yet her transition back to civilian life was bumpy. In the military, “anything I needed, I could go to my commanding officer and get guidance on the resources we had on base,” Whitfield said. “It was a close-knit community where we all supported each other.” But once she returned to the U.S., “I didn’t have a full sense of ‘OK, what do I do now?’. [Instead], I had a sense of confusion,” she recalled. “I didn’t have any idea how to connect with an organization that helped veterans.” Today, Whitfield is the director of the Miami-Dade chapter of Mission United, a United Way program that helps veterans navigate local services and resources. The nonprofit operates as a coordination center — a one-stop shop where veterans can go when they need help with everything from finding steady work and affordable housing to accessing healthcare and legal services. Since its launch in 2013, Mission United has helped more than 12,000 veterans and their families, but Whitfield and her team know there’s always more that can be done. An estimated 40,000 veterans currently live on the streets and nearly 25% have a disability resulting from their service. Another sobering statistic: Roughly 6,000 veterans die by suicide each year. To better help more veterans, Mission United partners with a number of diverse organizations across the private and public sectors. The group effort Whitfield leads, in which each partnering organization’s unique strengths are leveraged to benefit the most people, is essential to Mission United’s success. It’s an approach known as “collective impact,” which refers to a coordinated cross-sector collaboration structured to achieve measurable impact on social issues. Laura Whitfield is the director of the Miami-Dade chapter of Mission United, a United Way program that helps veterans navigate local services and resources. “We all want to offer comprehensive services that address the needs of veterans and their families, and reduce the barriers they face when integrating back to their communities,” Whitfield said of the collaboration’s goals. “We share data and information about the capacity we have to provide these services, and work together to fill gaps so that veterans aren’t turned away because the community has reached a threshold limit,” said Whitfield, adding that a key component to their success is continuous follow-up with veterans to make sure they’re getting the help they need. Within this network of nonprofits, corporations and government agencies, Mission United serves as the “backbone”: The organization not only acts as a coordination center for veterans needing assistance, it also sets the strategic focus and vision for the collective. Currently, Whitfield is in the process of retooling the program in Miami, with input and feedback from Mission United’s partners. Her hope is that Mission United can eventually help service members prepare for life after the military, even while still on active duty. That includes preemptively networking and forging connections with other people — and fellow veterans — in their communities back home. Once that happens, “[veterans] don’t feel so alone and isolated,” Whitfield said. “They’ve got their tribe.” For her part, Whitfield is encouraged by the strides Mission United is making. “I know that we have the right [partners] at the table because there is buy-in to a shared vision, willing participation and engagement, ownership of results and trust among partners,” she said. Whitfield is currently in the process of retooling the program in Miami. Although Whitfield only recently joined the Miami chapter of Mission United, she’s all-in on the nonprofit’s collective impact approach. In the future, she said, “we’ll focus on developing strategies and aligning on a system of measurement in a way that celebrates the contribution of all of the ecosystem partners in helping veterans achieve fulfilling and productive lives after serving.”
This article was produced in partnership with National Veterans Intermediary, an initiative of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. NVI increases the collaborative capacity of local communities to steward a national ecosystem, in order to achieve optimal well-being for veterans and their families. Sign up for alerts about NVI’s free webinars and tools to support community-based collaboration here.
When service members separate or retire from the military, more than 45,000 nonprofits, thousands of public agencies, and countless other organizations and individuals aim to support their transitions back to civilian life. This series explores how communities are collaborating across public, private, business, and social sectors to better connect the systems that serve veterans. This principle is called “collective impact”. The subjects featured are members of National Veterans Intermediary (NVI) Local Partner collaboratives. Pennsylvania is home to an estimated 930,000 veterans — 5,000 of whom reside in McKean County, a rural area in the northwestern part of the state. “We don’t have access to things in our backyard, like a city like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh does,” said Zach Pearson, an Army veteran and director of the county’s Department of Veterans Services. “So how do we combat that and still provide excellent service to our veterans?” The answer: Design a model that invites all community members to become stakeholders in veterans’ well-being, and work collectively toward the achievement of goals that support them. McKean County’s approach deploys the “collective impact” framework. Jennifer Splansky Juster, executive director of Collective Impact Forum, describes the all-hands-on-deck approach as building “a shared understanding of a problem and a commitment to solving it together.” When it comes to addressing complex social issues and creating lasting change, collective impact, which effectively mobilizes diverse participants with the same agenda, can generate more momentum than any one person or group working in isolation. McKean County’s Department of Veterans Services makes sure local veterans and their families get the county, state and federal benefits they’re entitled to. But for Pearson, assisting vets doesn’t stop there. He’s also dedicated to helping them find steady employment, receive counseling and access medical care. To reach those goals, Pearson has built a framework of companies, nonprofits, hospitals and schools. Thanks to his efforts, each month for the past two years 28 members of the McKean County Community Veterans Engagement Board have carved out time for strategic planning. After clearly defining the biggest issues facing local veterans, they create a plan that outlines the steps needed to address them. “We’re not there to eat lunch together,” Pearson said. “We’re there to solve problems.” Pearson serves as the group’s leader, bringing together state representatives, county commissioners, the regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency, anti-homelessness advocates, and suicide prevention coordinators. “If someone has an impact on veterans’ lives, they’re asked to be on my board,” he said. Zach Pearson has built a framework of companies, nonprofits, hospitals and schools to support the veterans in his community. The network’s information-sharing and aligned activities have produced bold results, and incorporating diverse perspectives and opinions adds invaluable input into real-time issues. For instance, when Pearson learned that some veterans had no choice but to drive four hours to the nearest VA hospital in Pittsburgh for cancer treatment, he met with decision-makers at the regional airport and Southern Airways Express, an airline that serves the area. They agreed to offer veterans $19 fares. The collaboration also arranged free ground transportation and helped coordinate hotel stays for veterans while they were in Pittsburgh. “It’s simple outside-the-box thinking,” said Pearson. “Almost everyone I’ve come across is 100% willing to help.” To get more exposure for his efforts and increase community engagement, Pearson regularly hosts live Q&A sessions on Facebook. In 20-minute increments, he might explain what Pennsylvania’s chapter of Wounded Warrior Project does or give an overview of the VA Medical Center’s services. “It’s like an introduction to the organizations in our backyard,” he said. “One of the most positive parts of my job is putting someone in contact with a service they didn’t know about.” It’s something he gets to do more often these days. “The fact that [veterans] are blowing up my phone — that’s a measure of success,” said Pearson. “I can get a phone call telling me a veteran’s disability [application] was approved, but that doesn’t mean as much to me as 25 phone calls in a day. People are trusting that we can help them.” Next on Pearson’s agenda? Spreading the word about how the collective impact approach has helped the veterans in McKean County. “If it works for our county, it’ll work for others,” Pearson said. “When the community gets involved in veterans’ lives, more members are encouraged to go get help.”
This article was produced in partnership with National Veterans Intermediary, an initiative of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. NVI increases the collaborative capacity of local communities to steward a national ecosystem, in order to achieve optimal well-being for veterans and their families. Sign up for alerts about NVI’s free webinars and tools to support community-based collaboration here.
When service members separate or retire from the military, more than 45,000 nonprofits, thousands of public agencies, and countless other organizations and individuals aim to support their transitions back to civilian life. This series explores how communities across the country are collaborating across public, private, business and social sectors to better connect the systems that serve veterans by leveraging the principles of “collective impact.” The subjects featured are all members of National Veterans Intermediary (NVI) Local Partner collaboratives. For many veterans, reintegrating into their communities after military service is challenging. Feelings of uncertainty can lead to isolation, and as many as one-third of veterans struggle with depression. It can be hard to reach out when help is needed. “[Veterans] might not know where to start to get help,” said Carlis Miller, a veteran of the US Marine Corps, who knows firsthand the difficulty of asking for support. Four years ago, Miller was in the middle of a painful divorce and had just finished grueling treatment for cancer. Not until the Houston native began volunteering for community service projects through the Mission Continues, a national nonprofit that encourages veterans to find new missions at home, did things begin to look up. His newfound drive to serve others “turned my life around,” said Miller, who was inspired to become a community leader for TMC. “My passion is to help others and let them know about this veteran community that now means so much to me.” U.S. Marine Corps veteran Carlis Miller works to support other Houston-based veterans. Today, Miller also serves on the board of National Veterans Intermediary’s “Local Partner” collaborative, Combined Arms, which connects Houston-area veterans with community-building activities and resources. He has also trained as a community leader through Leadership Houston. His participation in severalveteran-focused groups exemplifies the way these organizations work toward a common goal by sharing resources with each other along the way. It’s an approach known as “collective impact,” a commitment among a diverse network of organizations to collaborate in order to solve social problems. Collective impact means that organizations don’t have to compete to help veterans. Instead, “each organization does what it does best,” said Miller. “It’s not about all being the same. It’s about using our strengths to the best of our abilities.” Working alone, an organization is inherently limited in its ability to help veterans overcome barriers when transitioning back to civilian life. But when a nonprofit partners with like-minded groups, said Miller, “we have endless options for support.” “It’s really all about co-creating the future that we want to see and how we do that together,” said Jennifer Splansky Juster, executive director of the Collective Impact Forum, an initiative that supports the efforts of those who use this approach. To successfully reach their goals requires “building relationships, trust and communication across the different partners,” Juster added. Engaging community members, like Miller, who are deeply affected by the issues they’re trying to resolve is crucial — not only because their perspectives are important, but because they can help facilitate action, lead grassroots outreach and help sustain long-term change. And the more everyone works together, “the better we understand each other and how we can help each other out,” he added.
This article was produced in partnership with National Veterans Intermediary, an initiative of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. NVI increases the collaborative capacity of local communities to steward a national ecosystem, in order to achieve optimal well-being for veterans and their families. Sign up for alerts about NVI’s free webinars and tools to support community-based collaboration here.
Wearing a red, white and blue vest, Chief never leaves Aaron Mixell’s side. Mixell, an Army veteran, was paired with his service dog Chief through Patriot Paws, a nonprofit that trains and provides service dogs for disabled veterans. Chief can do everything from opening doors to comforting Mixell in moments of stress. Each year, Patriot Paws places between 10 and 15 dogs with veterans. Over the past 14 years, nearly 200 dogs have been trained and paired by the Texas-based group. It costs about $35,000 to train a dog, but the program is completely free for veterans. The nonprofit receives most of its funding through private donations and grants. Learn more about Patriot Paws and how you can help by watching the video above. More: 30% of Veterans Suffer From Ptsd. Science Says Yoga Will Help Them Heal
Brianna Renner had just given birth to her second daughter when she felt herself slipping into postpartum depression. Renner, who served in the Marines Corps for five years, was accustomed to serious life challenges, but her colicky infant’s nonstop tears left her feeling hopeless and alone. So she turned to the mat — her yoga mat, to be precise — and then things turned around. Renner rediscovered her mojo. “When I practiced yoga, it was the only time that I could actually be Brianna. I wasn’t a mom, I wasn’t a wife, I was just me on the mat,” Renner said. “And that was kind of beautiful and amazing.” Renner felt that she’d stumbled across something that could profoundly change the lives of people — specifically, her fellow service members — who had been through serious trauma, both physical and mental. So Renner googled “veterans” and “yoga” and found the Veterans Yoga Project. Intrigued, she read on and saw that the organization was hosting a trauma-yoga training in Arlington, Virginia. A couple of weeks later, Renner made the drive from her home in New Hampshire. “I drank the Kool-Aid,” she said, laughing. “Afterward, I talked to the executive director and told him, ‘I’m in, I’m sold. What can I do to help out?’” That was in 2014. Now Renner, who teaches yoga at a Veterans Affairs facility in White River Junction, Vermont, is Veterans Yoga Project’s director of programs. In that role, Renner manages all of VYP’s trainings, including their 15-hour free-for-veterans Mindful Resilience for Trauma Recovery training — one of which helped turn Matthew Adams’ life around. Adams served in the military for eight years. While in Iraq, an explosion threw him from a vehicle, leaving him with permanent physical problems. Upon discharge, he found himself in a dark place and subsequently “lost a couple of years in a bottle,” he told News Center Maine. Adams struggled with symptoms of PTSD before finding the mindfulness training program organized by VYP in Bangor, Maine. After his initial reluctance, Adams decided to attend, and he now credits the program, and yoga in general, with changing his life. “It really brought down the amount of pain I experienced in my back, it really calmed me down, helped me focus my mind and gain more control over my breathing,” he said. As a sufferer of PTSD, Adams is hardly alone. As many as 30% of former U.S. service members live with the crippling disorder. What’s more, roughly 20 veterans die by suicide every single day. And of those who have been diagnosed with PTSD — the symptoms of which include anxiety, depression, insomnia, uncontrollable anger and issues with addiction — only about half will ever seek treatment through the VA. Renner emphasized that yoga is not intended to replace other forms of treatment for PTSD, which typically include a combination of medication and exposure-based talk therapy. “Our program was designed specifically to be a part of a complementary practice, if you will, to therapy that may already be in place,” she said. “We work with yoga teachers and health clinicians to bring tools of mindful resilience to veterans and to their community.” So why yoga? Why not rugby or pole-vaulting or anything else that requires exertion and concentration? It has to do with how the body engages the brain during the practice of yoga, according to Daniel J. Libby, a Yale-trained clinical psychologist and a founder and executive director of VYP. “All traumatic events are defined by a lack of safety, predictability and control,” Libby said. “For someone who develops post-traumatic stress that perpetuates, the world continues to feel unsafe, unpredictable and uncontrollable, and my own mind and body are also unsafe, uncontrollable and unpredictable. As PTSD is a psycho-physiological condition, it only makes sense that a body-mind approach [like yoga] would be helpful.” Veterans honored Independence Day with a sunset yoga class in New York City on July 4, 2019.
FROM BATTLE TO BUDDHA
It makes sense that yoga can increase flexibility and resilience. But on the face of it, active wartime combat and sun salutations hardly seem simpatico. Part of it is yoga’s image problem, Renner said. “There is a huge stigma around the word ‘yoga,’ and I can remember 20 years ago when I went to my first class, I fell right into that stigma,” she said. “I’m like, this is not for me. I’m a badass Marine, I’m not doing yoga!” But it soon became clear to her that there was much more to the practice than nice leggings and Instagram-worthy visits to exotic ashrams. “You can still be a badass in uniform and have balance in your life. You don’t have to be super-hardcore all the time, because you can’t live in that place of hardcore-ness all the time.” In 2018 alone, VYP documented more than 20,000 visits by veterans, said Renner (classes are always free for veterans; some are open to their spouses and children, too). Currently, VYP has over 120 national volunteers who chip in to teach yoga and help run the organization. In addition, VYP hosts an annual Veterans Gratitude Week, where thousands of civilians and veterans come together in studios across the country to practice yoga “with an attitude of gratitude for our service members,” Libby said. All proceeds benefit VYP (this year’s event will take place from Nov. 8–18). Despite the increasing numbers of vets taking up yoga, some people argue that those who practice it are a self-selecting group. In other words, a veteran who elects to take a yoga class might already be open to the kind of change a regular yoga practice can engender. Dianne Groll, an associate professor and research director at Queen’s University’s Department of Psychiatry in Ontario, is one of them. “Who does [yoga] work for, and for how long?” she said. “It works really well for the people who like it, and are well enough to do it.” Groll, whose husband is in the Canadian Armed Forces, co-authored a 2016 paper that examined the impact of a 12-week yoga program on members of the Canadian military who self-identified as having experienced at least one traumatic event while serving. The results for this group showed statistically significant improvements in their levels of anger, anxiety, pain and quality of sleep compared to those who did not participate in the program. Moreover, individuals “who met the PTSD screening criteria showed significantly greater improvement than those who did not.” Groll added that there were significant obstacles in conducting the study — people with PTSD sometimes find it difficult to commit to a regularly scheduled class, and about 20% of the participants had dropped out before the three-month study concluded. But as Groll pointed out, the bar to entry for yoga is low, so why not give it a shot? “Yoga is relatively cheap. It can be done pretty much anywhere, and a lot of people seem to benefit from it,” Groll said. “And there was a significant increase in people’s mood and a decrease in anxiety [among vets who participated in the study], so we should find out why people quit practicing yoga and encourage them to keep going.”
PSEUDOSCIENCE … OR NEUROSCIENCE?
Deb Jeannette teaches yoga at a VA Medical Center on Long Island. Her son spent 11 years in the Marines, part of it on deployment to Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot. “I was constantly having to worry about his safety, and dealing with that trauma of being in a situation where there was no control,” she said. Then she found the Veterans Yoga Project. Despite a lack of control over her son’s well-being, she realized, “I also had my yoga. I could roll out my mat. I could do the breaths. I could do the work. I could do the meditation. I could remember to live moment by moment, because that’s all we have.” Jeannette is now president of VYP’s board of directors, as well as New York’s regional director. Jeannette said that VYP teachers track statistical improvements in participants via something called a SUDS sheet, which stands for Subjective Units of Distress Scale. She said that of the vets who attended a VYP class in 2018, 80% to 90% experienced a reduction in stress. “And that’s without drugs,” Jeannette added. The science backs her up. Emily Hawken is a postdoctoral neuroscience fellow at Queen’s University who has spent the past six years investigating the effects of “things you do to your body as it pertains to the cellular and molecular structure of the brain.” When it comes to trauma, the prevailing theory is that the body falls “out of homeostasis,” which produces all of the symptoms associated with PTSD. A “learned” controlled breathing, like the kind that undergirds yoga, changes the heart rate and modulates the vagus nerve, which collects info from all of our organs and peripheral nervous system and feeds it back into our brains. This increases heart rate variability and modulates some key neurotransmitters in the brain, specifically GABA, which researchers suspect boosts mood and has a calming effect on the nervous system. In other words, controlled breathing “keeps things quiet” in the brain. “It’s mostly the breathwork that is the real driver of any sort of impact [from practicing yoga] we are going to see in the brain — at least, that’s the hypothesis,” Hawken said. “But there’s evidence to support it.” For VYP founder Libby, proof of yoga’s significant impact on reducing PTSD symptoms is made real by every veteran who completes a yoga course. “I hear so many stories about veterans who are turning their lives around,” Libby said. “Veterans telling us that they leave class in less pain than when they arrived; that they leave class with less stress than when they arrived. And that they are finding meaning and purpose and a life worth living.” More: This Inspiring Former Inmate Teaches Yoga In An Unlikely Spot
Ali Taylor never would have guessed that the end of her husband’s military career would prompt her to try improv: The last time she attempted any type of acting was as a middle-school theater student. But there she was, at a five-day event held at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam near Honolulu for wounded Air Force members and their caregivers, learning the core improv concept of “Yes, and,” and realizing it now applied to her life. Her husband, Staff Sgt. Brandon Cipolla, had recently been admitted to theAir Force Wounded Warrior Program due to service-related injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic migraine headaches, and a shoulder injury requiring several surgeries. Taylor had been appointed his caregiver as part of the program, yet was still working full-time as an executive chef at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss. “There’s not a lot of smiling and laughing when you’re in a situation like we are,” Taylor said. When Cipolla applied to attend the CARE event (which encompasses all of the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program’s areas of support) to prepare for his upcoming medical retirement and transition, Taylor wasn’t sure what to expect. However, she looked forward to a brief respite from their daily routine, as well as the opportunity to find support and camaraderie from others in the same position. Each day, while Cipolla participated in mock interviews and worked on other job-search skills, Taylor took classes, including financial planning and navigating the military’s insurance programs. At night, she immersed herself in improv workshops, one of several offerings (along with more traditional choices like yoga, journaling, and painting) designed to help participants. Though all workshops are optional, the program encourages caregivers and injured service members to attend as part of their path back to wellness.
While improv specifically may seem a surprising choice for those struggling to transition to life after injury, it’s now part of the resiliency programming the Air Force offers its Wounded Warriors (the term the United States Armed Forces uses to describe injured service members) and their caregivers. Aaron Moffett, Ph.D., a sports psychologist who runs the resiliency program, noted that the resiliency workshops take a holistic approach to teaching life skills. With improv, “it’s really a communication skill,” he explained. “You have to listen to your partner and think quickly: ‘How does what I’m doing relate to what that person just said, and how do I communicate back to that person?’” The tone is set on the very first day by retired Staff Sgt. and Air Force medic BJ Lange, an actor and comedian who developed the curriculum and launched the improv workshops last year. Lange makes a point of letting participants know that he’s not there as a military training instructor, but as someone who’s committed to helping them have fun on their path toward healing. Lange starts off by sharing his own story: His traumatic brain injury, two bouts with testicular cancer, struggles with depression and anxiety, and his own participation in the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program. “When my cancer returned, I found myself getting deeper and deeper into depression,” he said. “I had to look back at all of these things I had been teaching for so long about facing my fear.” In creating the program, Lange looked to the research and overall approach ofapplied improv, where collaborative exercises are used as a tool for personal or professional growth. While improved listening skills, problem solving, and thinking outside the box are all benefits of the program, one of the most important takeaways is the chance for participants to be with others who are facing similar struggles – and to have fun. “Teambuilding, camaraderie, and trust in one another: These are all things that can be broken when you’re going through heavy mental and physical adversity,” Lange explained. “I don’t teach the warriors and their caregivers how to be funny; I don’t teach them how to perform. I teach them how to use these skills [and] how they can use them to rebuild their lives.” But it’s not always fun, laughter and games. At one workshop when everyone was lying on the ground at the start of a new scene, Lange recalled that the setup “looked like dead bodies,” to one of the wounded service members. When flashbacks like this happen, Lange stops the action. The group took time to discuss the participant’s observation and talk about other possible ways to view the scenario before moving forward. Participants often become more comfortable over the course of the week, whether it’s being able to open up about their stories or even just make eye contact, which can be a struggle for those who have suffered trauma. “We talk a lot about interpersonal skills,” Lange said. “[When you retreat] into your head – from depression, anxiety or a TBI – you look down a lot.” For some, it’s about being able to tap into what it’s like to feel happy again. Lange recalled one participant who had sustained a traumatic brain injury during his service in Afghanistan and rarely spoke, relying on his wife to communicate for him. At the end of the week, she told Lange that her husband’s participation in the improv workshops was the first time she’d seen him smile since his injury. This year, Lange expects to teach workshops around the country and in Germany as part of the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program’s CARE events. With about 8,000 participants in the program (not including caregivers), he knows he won’t be able to reach all of them. But for those who have taken his workshop, like Taylor, the skills are ones that carry over into their daily lives, whether it’s honing the flexibility to work with a new situation or being open to finding some humor in it. “The concept of ‘Yes, and’ is that you work with what you’ve been given: You carry on and keep going,” says Taylor, whose husband recently took a new job requiring them to relocate to Olympia, Wash. “That’s our marriage.”
More: A Hurricane Demolished My City. My Military Experience Is Helping Me Rebuild It.
Approximately 4,300 women veterans are homeless at any given time, according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. When Cindy Seymour, a former Air Force sergeant, heard that number, she knew she had to do something to help her sisters-in-arms. In 2011, Seymour founded Serenity for Women, an organization that works to improve the lives of women transitioning from the military into civilian life. The Syracuse, New York-based nonprofit does this by building transitional “tiny” homes for homeless female veterans and also connecting them with local support services. An estimated 1.4 million veterans are at risk of becoming homeless, and women vets make up ten percent of the homeless veteran population, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Job support and financial assistance are both critical in reducing homeless veteran populations. But women vets have additional needs that require more nuanced solutions. “Women veterans absolutely require a different approach of outreach and support than their male counterparts,” says Anna Stormer with the Women Veterans Center in Philadelphia, which reached “functional zero,” or when homelessness is essentially eradicated among veterans, in 2015. Women face a number of unique barriers when accessing services, Stormer says. “A lot of women truly are unaware of the benefits for which they qualify.” The Women Veterans Center, for example, uses a “trauma informed” approach to help empower female veterans in making long-term housing decisions. This method addresses issues that impact many female vets, like post-traumatic stress disorder. The center also features play areas to occupy kids while their mothers are with social services. To be connected with [the community] I think is important, and to have an organization that is vet-specific,” says Andrew McCawley, president and CEO of the New England Center and Home for Veterans (NECHV). With financing from Citi, NECHV created a designated floor for women and expanded its mental healthcare facilities. NECHV’s program is one of a number of initiatives across the country with the goal of helping homeless veterans. The Bring Them Homes initiative, run by the LISC-National Equity Fund (NEF) and supported by Citi Community Development, gives pre-development grants to nonprofits that provide supportive housing to homeless veterans. So far, Bring Them Homes has created nearly 4,000 housing units, and also offers a variety of support services to vets in need. “The greatest need is with single adults, and the percentages have been increasing with women,” says Debbie Burkart, vice president of supportive housing for NEF. “These vets deserve special attention. They have selflessly given to this country and then they’ve come back and, in some cases, we haven’t done enough to take care of them. They shouldn’t end up on the street.” Much like Bring Them Homes, the tiny homes program in Syracuse embeds supportive services into the housing process. Once construction on the tiny homes is finished, the only thing the women need to bring is themselves — and a willingness to take part in programs that help them secure jobs and receive therapy.
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This article is paid for and produced in collaboration with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veteran service organizations and leading veteran champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the sixth installment in a seriesfocusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.
When her Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2008, former Army Sgt. First Class Elana Duffy was tossed around the front seat like a football, which resulted in a brain injury. For years afterward, she couldn’t shake the raw, negative emotions that slowly ate away at her. It simply never occurred to her that the impact to her brain would eventually erode her mental well-being too. “I realized that I was kinda angry, but I wasn’t acknowledging it,” Duffy, 37, says. “I just thought I was processing things differently.” Until 2012, Duffy worked in military intelligence. As an interrogator in Iraq, she extracted information from her subjects — some of whom were directly responsible for the deaths of her fellow soldiers — and often had to befriend them. Doing so was emotionally challenging, and after her head injury the stress of it all soon engulfed her. “Everything, I thought, was ultimately related to a physical problem, and I didn’t really want to confront it,” she says. She’s not unique in this situation. A recent report concluded that nearly half of post-9/11 veterans aren’t accessing the mental care they need. And women, who make up about 15 percent of the active-duty force, are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at a higher rate than in previous conflicts. Current estimates put the number of female veterans experiencing some form of depression or anxiety at one-half to one-third. What’s more, another one in five report being the victims of military sexual trauma (MST). Army Sgt. First Class Elana Duffy (left) and the Humvee she was in (right) when a roadside bomb went off, resulting in her brain injury. There are a host of methods to treat such veterans, like cognitive processing therapy and exposure therapy. These psychotherapies, while medically sound, can require a patient be in treatment for months, if not years. Contrast that with the use of a technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, whose adherents say can rehabilitate combat veterans with PTSD in fewer sessions. Duffy, who suffered from apoplexy, or cerebral hemorrhaging, was introduced to the practice at Headstrong, a treatment program in New York City dedicated to serving post-9/11 vets. Headstrong specializes in EMDR, which uses eye movements to alleviate the stress of a traumatic event. While closely tracking the rapid back-and-forth finger movements of a therapist (or other side-to-side stimulation), the patient holds in his or her mind the disturbing event and the negative memories associated with it. No one knows exactly how EMDR works, but it seems to affect the way the brain processes information, including the source of a patient’s PTSD. After successful treatment, the patient can still recall the event, of course, but she’s able to recognize it in a less debilitating way. The theory behind EMDR, which has been around since the late 1980s but only gainedacceptance as a treatment for veterans in the past 15 years, comes from what we know about sleeping. During deep sleep, our eyes move quickly from left to right in a process called rapid eye movement. REM helps our brains metabolize information gathered throughout the day and lets go of whatever it doesn’t need.
Though the treatment has been widely supported by multiple studies, it’s not without criticism. A 2013 meta-analysis of prior EMDR studies, published in the journal Military Behavioral Health, concluded that it “[failed] to support the effectiveness of EMDR in treating PTSD in the military population.” The Department of Veterans Affairs — which, along with the Department of Defense, recommends the treatment — takes a more balanced approach, stating, “Although EMDR is an effective treatment for PTSD, there is disagreement about [if] it works. Some research shows that the back and forth movement is an important part of treatment, but other research shows the opposite.” For Duffy, EMDR was the lifesaver she almost turned down. “‘I don’t like psyches,’” she remembers saying of psychiatrists, after a clinician recommended she try EMDR at Headstrong. “I flat out told him, ‘I don’t trust them, I don’t like them. So I can’t promise you that I’m going to follow through with this.’” But she did. And three years later, she swears by the clinic’s EMDR therapy in helping her manage her stress and anger. Keeping all veterans, both women and men, in treatment is its own battle. A report by the RAND Institute found that the number of follow-up appointments given to veterans is insufficient to help manage PTSD, which leads many to give up on medical care altogether. “The military sets up a therapy structure that’s so dysfunctional,” says Dr. Laurie Deckard, chief clinical officer for the all-female veteran treatment center 5Palms in Ormond Beach, Florida. She knows this firsthand: When she worked at Fort Stewart in Georgia, she routinely saw 10 service members in the morning alone, each getting only 20 minutes of therapy. “There is no way to do PTSD treatment in 20-minute sessions.” But as more mental health professionals embrace EMDR for treating veterans, the calculation of how long it takes to rehabilitate them is changing. Duffy, who once balked at the idea of psychotherapy, now says, “I don’t have to be a tough guy anymore. I don’t have to be this miserable.” Editors’ note: Headstrong was co-founded by Zach Iscol, who is also a member of the NationSwell Council. This was brought to our attention after publication. Neither Headstrong nor the NationSwell Council paid for this article. Correction: A previous version of this article identified Headstrong as a clinic. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
Gordon Soderberg spent six years as a member of the U.S. Navy, but he found that his skills would be better served stateside tackling a different issue: natural disasters.
“Military teaches basic skills of being able to mobilize, to get a lot of work with a number of people” says Soderberg. “But for potential disasters that come, [a veteran is] a perfect responder to do that.”
From his work with groups like Team Rubicon and Detroit Blight Busters, Soderberg developed the idea of Veterans Village. Watch the video above to see how it’s helping veterans extend their service.
“Veterans bring an attitude of get the work done. They have leadership skills,” he says. “By having Blight Busters and the blight of Detroit as bootcamp for veterans, we get to help clean up Detroit while training.”
Life on a forward operating base is dirty (no showers, only water bottles and baby wipes) and isolating. Supplies arrive via airdrops and internet connection can be fickle at best. On most military bases, deployed soldiers use WhatsApp to communicate with loved ones at home, but those living on remote ones are forced to make expensive, long-distance phone calls. For those service members, seemingly antiquated calling cards remain the go-to. Providing free talk time is the nonprofit Cell Phones for Soldiers. With more than 4,500 drop-off locations nationwide, the organization accepts donated devices: The newest are sold for market value, and the oldest are scraped for precious metals. (More below on the ones in between.) Profit from those sales goes towards purchasing calling card minutes. During the height of the troop surge in the Middle East, Cell Phones for Soldiers sent more than 15,000 calling cards each week. With the number of deployed troops decreasing in recent years, Cell Phones for Soldiers has expanded its services to serve veterans here at home. It works with all the major wireless providers to give free airtime — more than 500,000 minutes each month — to former service members. As for those donated cell phones that are in good enough shape to be used? They’re given to vets, too. By the end of 2017, the organization hopes to sign up 100,000 veterans for free cell phones and service. Bruce Jewett, a 55-year-old veteran living in Vermont describes the phone he received from the organization as “a godsend” and says that it helps him manage the 10 to 12 doctors’ appointments he has each month to treat his shoulder and back problems. The organization also issues one-time $500 grants to service members who find themselves in a financial hardship, such as being unable to afford rent, dental bills or car repairs.
