Tag: Veterans

The Disaster Response Program That’s Building More Than Homes

Posted on by robbie

Susan Ward had only served five weeks in the military when she was medically discharged after an injury — but that didn’t change the fact that she wanted a life in service.  
“From that moment when I got out, I was devastated,” she tells NationSwell. “That was my life goal and plan. I didn’t know what to do. I love helping and serving people, doing what I can for people.”
That feeling isn’t uncommon for thousands of military veterans who have a hard time transitioning to civilian life. Though unemployment among veterans who have served since 2001 has gone down, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 370,000 veterans who were still unemployed this year.
Numerous transition programs exist to help vets bridge that gap, but for Ward, finding a gig — or even volunteer work — that was service-oriented was necessary for her happiness. She eventually became a firefighter in Alaska, but after 10 years a different injury forced Ward to leave yet another job she loved. She fell into a deep depression, she says, and struggled to find another role that allowed her to fulfill her passion for public service.
“I was on Facebook one day and just saw this post about Team Rubicon, and I had this moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to do this,’” she says.
Team Rubicon began as a volunteer mission in 2010 after the earthquake that devastated Haiti. The organization offered disaster relief by utilizing the help of former service workers from the military and civilian sectors.
It has since evolved into an organization fueled by 80,000 volunteers. The majority are veterans who assist with everything from clearing trees and debris in tornado-ravaged towns to gutting homes that have been destroyed by floods. The teams, which are deployed as units, also work alongside other disaster-relief organizations, such as the Red Cross.
Similar to Ward, Tyler Bradley, a Clay Hunt fellow for Team Rubicon who organizes and develops volunteers, battled depression after he had to leave the Army due to a genetic health problem.
“After I found [Team Rubicon], I was out doing lots of volunteer work. My girlfriend noticed and said she would see the old Tyler come back,” Bradley says. “Team Rubicon turned my life around.”
“There’s one guy who says that just because the uniform comes off doesn’t mean service ends,” says Zachary Brooks-Miller, director of field operations for Team Rubicon. He adds that the narrative around the value of veterans has to change. “We don’t take the approach that our vets are broken; we see vets as a strength within our community.”
In addition to Team Rubicon’s disaster-relief efforts, the organization also helps to empower veterans and ease their transition into the civilian world, according to Christopher Perkins, managing director at Citi and a member of the company’s Citi Salutes Affinity Steering Committee. By collaborating with Citi, Team Rubicon was able to scale up its contributions, allowing service workers to provide widespread relief last year in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Those efforts were five times larger than anything the organization had previously done and brought even more veterans into the Team Rubicon family.
“Being around my brothers and sisters in arms whom I missed so much, it was so clear to me the impact Team Rubicon would have not only in communities impacted by disaster, but also among veterans,” says Perkins, a former captain in the Marines. “Every single American should know about this organization.”
Although Team Rubicon doesn’t brand itself as a veterans’ organization, it does view former members of the military as the backbone of its efforts. And many veterans see the team-building and camaraderie as a kind of therapy for service-related trauma.  
“There are so many people who have [post-traumatic stress disorder] from different things, and when you’re with family you have to pretend that you’re OK,” says Ward, who deals with PTSD from her time as a soldier and firefighter. “But when you’re with your Team Rubicon family, it’s a tribe.”

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This article is paid by and produced in collaboration 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 fourth installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

Battling Discrimination on the Battlefield

Posted on by robbie

I will never forget the moment when I was told I wouldn’t do much in my life.
I was in high school in the Bronx, where I grew up, and one of my grades had dipped to a C. I was called into a counselor’s office. She was on the phone with my parents.
“With these grades,” I remember her saying, “she’ll only be a secretary.”
Before that moment, I had wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to do something good and help people. Maybe it was the color of my skin, maybe it was the expectations of women back then. Whatever it was, after that moment, I knew that I would have to fight harder to get what I wanted.
I went to nursing school right after high school. And though I had never considered a career in the armed forces, serving people has always been a part of what I do — it’s part of the job, being a nurse. You care for people. You do no harm.
So when, at 30 years old, I was recruited to be a nurse for the Army, I didn’t think much of it. It was another opportunity to serve. The recruiter came to the hospital I was working at and, along with my friend, we were sworn in — right in front of our patients.

Battling Discrimination 2
After retiring from the military, Annette Tucker Osborne became the Brooklyn, New York, chapter president of the National Association of Black Military Women.

From there, we were sent off to basic training at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. From the moment we arrived to the moment we left, we were all told the same thing: You are not different. As a woman, it was actually refreshing to hear, because it was the opposite of degrading. If a man had to run this long, so did you. If a man had to do this work, so did you. We were equals in that camp.
But that’s not to say that prejudice doesn’t exist in the military, despite how diverse it is.
In 2012, when I was deployed to Kuwait, I was brought into a base camp as chief nurse to help oversee  soldier health. When I met the officer — a white man from Alabama — he looked at me, then looked down at my résumé. He couldn’t put the two together. He seemed unable to equate a black woman with the well-polished and extremely qualified person on paper.
“Sir,” I told him. “What you see on that résumé is me. I’ve worked hard for what’s on my résumé.”
After working together for quite a long time, he eventually came to trust me. After all, he kind of needed to, if he wanted to know what was going on medically with our soldiers.
And then, out in the desert, there were some young service members who don’t want to salute you. I’d stop a few every now and then, asking if they could see my rank as an Army colonel.
After I retired from the service, I was approached by the National Association of Black Military Women, a national organization dedicated to providing support and visibility for women just like me.
As the president of the Brooklyn chapter, which has only been around for a year, I’ve already seen tremendous success in our effort to get the word out to other women that they are not alone. There is a place for them in the military, as well as afterward. We aim to make the point to young women of color, just like it was made to me back in basic, that you are not different. You are just as strong. Continue to persevere and know your goals.
Take it from me: No one can tell you what you can and can’t be in your future.

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As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.

How to Translate Military Skills to a Civilian Resume

Posted on by robbie

A military job like U.S. Air Force aircraft controller doesn’t exactly translate to the majority of civilian career options. At least that’s how Eric Lundberg felt once he gave the Air Force his notice to retire.
Lundberg is not alone. Sixty-eight percent of veterans say that securing employment opportunities that match their military experience is one of the main challenges to finding a civilian job, according to a 2014 survey by VetAdvisor and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. “There is a critical element in transition,” says Ruth Christopherson, SVP of Citi Community Development and program director of Citi Salutes, Citi’s company-wide initiative that supports service members, veterans and their families. “That’s the translation. Not everyone knows that veteran military language.”
Some of that difficulty is a result of the military mind-set that there is a playbook for everything — including finding a job. After all, most military operating procedures, from running a nuclear submarine to changing battery frequency, are spelled out in some sort of field manual. That’s just not the case, though, when it comes to snagging a job in the corporate or tech sectors.
For Angel McDowell, who was a major in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps, one of her challenges was that she followed the career map provided by the Army, as opposed to fine-tuning her skills to one unique specialization. In her two decades of service, her enlisted duties ranged from medical lab technician to troop commander — not one of which easily translated onto a résumé. As a result, she stuck to focusing on project management.  
“I asked my mentor for advice, hired a résumé writer and started looking for a job,” she says. “I followed all the transition steps you learn about while still in Army, but I did not have much success.”
For someone who enlists after high school or has never had to apply for a civilian job, the process can be daunting. Translating military skills to an appealing civilian résumé can be particularly challenging, because military titles are often obscure — “field officer” and “financial technician,” to name a few. Military-transition and mentoring programs, like Veterans on Wall Street or the university-accredited FourBlock (which prides itself on having a strong relationship with diverse employers), can help find clarity.
“Each veteran’s transition is unique,” Christopherson says. “Every aspect of their life is up in the air. Mentoring is that personal touch that takes the unknown and makes it less scary and less of an obstacle to be successful.”
Experts recommend that vets making the transition to civilian life outline their work duties in a typical day as well as for an atypical day. But, they add, it’s best to remove all military jargon. “Explain it as if you’re talking to a 4-year-old,” says Robyn Coburn, a résumé coach specializing in the entertainment industry and founder of WorkInProduction.com. “Then you can start seeing how your particular duties translate to job-speak.”
Veterans shouldn’t feel compelled to find a new job that exactly mirrors their former military duties. In fact, one of the perks of having general responsibilities like report acquisition and handling of multimillion-dollar equipment is that they translate to a myriad of jobs, from script supervisor to operations manager. Industries all across the board value personal interests and unique experiences that go beyond job titles.
For veterans seeking a civilian job, experts recommend creating a résumé that reflects a desired trajectory: Look up descriptions for dreams jobs and then incorporate keywords from those descriptions onto the résumé itself.
For vets who choose to go back to school, the Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration offers online modules that go hand-in-hand with specific higher education coursework. The program is like having an insider whisper all the tips and tricks to getting through school, from effective note-taking to navigating campus life. “Here is a university that understands the [transitioning] veteran,” says Christopherson. “Columbia’s program and partnerships help guide a career path into the workforce.”
Transitioning vets are also privy to tech-forward resources designed to help them enter civilian life. For example, Military.com’s Transition App, which is part of Monster Worldwide and supported by Citi, links vets with job matches based on specific experience and title by aggregating data from Monster.com’s employment website. In matching skills developed while in the military to databases, the app recommends jobs that not only target primary skills, such as leadership, but also takes secondary and tertiary skills into account. It also offers an interactive checklist to assist with transition concerns, like financial education and preparing for relocation. A planned update to the Transition App this spring will expand content for military spouses and veterans with disabilities, further assisting a smooth transition for the entire family.
Shift, a tech-focused recruiting platform for those transitioning from the military, is another service that assists with career changes. Shift’s founder, Mike Slagh, a former U.S. Navy bomb-squad officer, started the company in 2016 to give future veterans a leg up in finding tech careers by facilitating fellowships before officially leaving the military.
When Lundberg gave the military his six-months’ notice, he started to look for a civilian job. “The transition is crazy,” he says.
After 10 months of searching on his own, Lundberg reached out to Shift. The recruiter matched Lundberg’s Air Force skill set with the needs of tech companies, resulting in a three-month fellowship with Citrine Informatics, an AI platform aiding in the acceleration of materials and product development. As part of his fellowship, Lundberg educates material scientists on how to optimize Citrine’s AI platform by providing customized training.
“That’s exactly what I was doing in the Air Force,” he says. “When I’m at a training event, I can translate what I did to what I am doing now.”

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This article is paid for 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 third installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

My New Mission: Saving Vets Who Can’t Save Themselves

Posted on by robbie

I wish I could’ve saved my soldiers.
I was 22 years old when I became a platoon leader overseeing and taking care of 40 soldiers in combat in 2010. At the time, I had only done one tour — 12 months — in Iraq. But many of my soldiers had served four or five tours and had seen much more than I had.
Our job was to drive up and down the International Highway, which connected Kuwait to Iraq, and build relationships with local Iraqi police and sheiks. But we also had to check for improvised explosives, or IEDs.
We didn’t get all of them. In one case, before heading out on a mission, a U.S. envoy truck came careening into our base, half blown to hell and torn to shreds. In the back: three dead bodies. We had missed an IED.
There’s a lot of guilt in seeing something like that, and it can lead to a major symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder called survivor’s remorse. There is a wear on the brain and the body that goes into being in the military, especially for those deployed.
But were you ever to suggest talking to a therapist, you’d be hard-pressed to find many service members who would take you up on it. In the military, getting mental health treatment is viewed as a weakness — which, besides the negative stigma, is just plain wrong. There were soldiers who’d give therapy a try, only to leave after a single session and say, “I don’t feel better. I need to get back to the unit. I need to help out. This is an hour out of my time when I could be spending that with my family.”
And within a few years, there were people in my unit who had attempted suicide. It’s been seven years since I left Iraq, and in that time we’ve lost two people who were in my unit, one of whom I directly oversaw.
As a platoon leader, I viewed it as my responsibility to take care of our soldiers beyond getting the mission done. But with the news of the suicides came a sense that I had failed as their leader. It was my responsibility to take care of these guys, just like they took care of us.
After I retired from the military in 2015, I went to business school in Philadelphia. It had become my mission to find out how I could make our soldiers know that therapy could actually work for them, if only they would stick with it. Just as you wouldn’t return to your normal, daily routine after breaking an arm and undergoing one session with a physical therapist, neither should you expect to be fully recuperated after one session with a mental health professional.

Chris Molaro (left) served in Iraq as a liaison to local police and sheiks.

But, I soon realized, to get soldiers into therapy and keep them there, they needed to see — physically, with their own eyes — the progress they were making.
I read up on research that showed how you can use EEG technology, which measures electrical activity in the brain, to also measure one’s emotions. That was when a light bulb just went off, like, “Holy shit, you could make mental health as black and white as a broken arm.”
That meant therapists could measure and track the progress of patients, objectively. And by doing so, they could fight that negative stigma and give people more hope.
So I developed NeuroFlow. The idea is simple: Give therapists a technology that uses basic and affordable medical supplies, like EEGs or heart rate monitors, to examine the health of their clients. That way, patients could see how their heart races — literally — in real time as they talk about something traumatic. And then, over the course of their sessions, they would be able to see their heart rate slow down and return to a more relaxed state as they healed.
This is my new mission: helping the veteran community. With 20 vets killing themselves in the U.S. every day, there is still a lot of work to be done. So I can’t quite say my mission is complete … yet.

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As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.

A New Battleground: Financial Balance

Posted on by robbie

Life changed quickly for Ernesto Olmos when he left the U.S. Marine Corps. After being stationed in North Carolina for four years, the corporal and his wife moved to California — and were hit with a drastic increase in housing costs.
“My wife and I had prepared for some of these financial differences in advance, but the hike in rent was substantial. We went from paying $750 for a townhome to seeing one-bedroom apartments for about $1,500 in Santa Clarita,” he says.
Olmos’ mother suggested the couple apply for a four-bedroom house with Homes 4 Families. The Citi-supported organization provides affordable housing to low-income, honorably discharged veterans. Their application for a new home in Santa Clarita Valley was accepted in 2016.
In addition to providing housing assistance, the Homes 4 Families’ initiative offers a free financial education program called Clearpoint Reconnect, operated by Money Management International.  The program includes online courses, workshops and counseling for military families transitioning to civilian life.
While Olmos’ home was being built, he completed a financial planning exercise to reduce credit card debt, took educational courses to increase his long-term financial security and learned to manage his new home as an investment.  “I have never been one to think about retirement, but the but the worksheets made me realize that we need to plan for the future,” Olmos says.
For veterans early in the transition stage, counseling programs like Clearpoint Reconnect can offer a particularly helpful field guide for understanding unfamiliar financial processes.
“Having that financial education stays with them long-term,” says Ruth Christopherson, Senior Vice President of Citi Salutes and Citi Community Development, which has supported the Clearpoint Reconnect program since 2012. “Things can change, but understanding their financial plan prepares vets for bumps down the road. If one’s car breaks down or if a vet loses a job, this counseling program can keep them out of debt, and they have the education to keep moving forward.”
The program includes phone, online and in-person sessions on subjects like understanding credit and debt, and avoiding bankruptcy. Clearpoint Reconnect also offers student loan and home mortgage consulting.  

“Many veterans find it challenging to adapt to the world of civilian finances, and it might take two or three years to sort things out,” says Kate Horrell, a military finance coach. “Most people don’t understand the many ways their finances will change when they leave the military.  Certain benefits will no longer be free, and your entire paycheck will be subject to taxes.”
Jeffrey Lodick, a former Army master sergeant and current host of the “On the Other Side” podcast, is no stranger to the challenges of decoding a civilian paycheck.  After retiring in September 2017, Lodick’s shift to the private sector included a salary learning curve. “I couldn’t tell you what my salary was in the military,” he says. “I knew what I got paid on the first and the fifteenth of each month, not what was going to the GI Bill and my taxes.”

As someone who hadn’t scrutinized his military paycheck for 20 years, navigating private sector tax paperwork took effort. “As silly as it sounds, I didn’t know how to fill out a W-4,” Lodick says. In addition to a new salary, Lodick entered a different tax bracket, which created another set of unknowns. “I never had any assets to deal with. It’s going to be a learning process.”
Lodick’s situation is not unique. “Military retirees are stupendously unprepared for changes in their tax situation,” says Horrell. When they return to civilian life, vets are often unaware that they need adjust their taxes to account for military retirement and avoid under-withholding.
“You could end up owing more than $10,000 because of under-withholding two different sources of income,” says Horrell. “Any income changes need to be reflected in a W-4. This doesn’t seem to be immediately apparent to everyone.”
The upside? Veterans and tech communities are responding to the challenges with a growing set of tools to ease the transition. In addition to Clearpoint Reconnect, whose services are free to all military personnel, Military.com, TheMilitaryWallet.com, and LaceyLangford.com are excellent resources that focus on military money issues.

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This article is paid for 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 second installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

For Many Female Vets, Healing From Trauma Starts With the Eyes

Posted on by robbie

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 gained acceptance 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.

Discovering a New Way to Serve

Posted on by robbie

When I joined the Army, I thought I was 9 feet tall and bulletproof. I was Rambo. All it took was breathing in some toxic dust to change that.
My time in the service was cut far too short by a medical injury. (I was planning to retire in the military.) This caused me to go into a downward spiral of self-hate that resulted in me becoming a full-time alcoholic. During the worst of it, I’d end up drunk and sleeping on my mother’s doorstep. But after getting help and recognizing that there is life after injury, I vowed to spend my time helping other vets going through addiction.
In 2001, I was stationed at a port in Serbia with the Kosovo Force. We trekked across dirt roads with the turret doors of our tanks open, breathing in sand and dust that was laced with chemical warfare from when Yugoslavia faced off against the Soviets. We never wore gas masks.
Days later, my organs were shutting down. I had an enlarged heart. I quit breathing for long enough that it caused a brain injury. I was being read my last rites by the station’s chaplain and a plot was being picked out back home in West Virginia.
Miraculously, though, I survived. When I got back to the U.S., I was 100 pounds lighter. I looked like I had a gunshot wound in the chest or had been bit by a shark with all the staples covering my body.

Greathouse nearly lost his life after being exposed to toxic dust in a war zone.

The doctors gave me just a few years to live. I fought to see my children grow up, even though I recognized I probably would never play ball with my son or walk my daughter down the aisle.
But the comfort of family only went so far. After a year and a half of not being able to walk, being in rehabilitation and feeling like I was losing my mind or that my life was over, I fell into a deep depression.
I started self-medicating, and tequila was the easiest substance to get a hold of. I didn’t become a drunk overnight, but it didn’t take a long time, either, because the alcohol became the only thing that helped me function.
After about a decade of watching the disappointment in my children and parents’ eyes, I decided to get help at the Veterans Administration hospital in Huntington, W.V.
Through recreational therapy, I was truly able to turn my life around. It put me among guys just like myself — we were all injured in some way and a bit to ourselves. After I went whitewater rafting for the first time and experienced that thrill, I felt brand new.
I began to recognize that I didn’t need to be depressed about my situation. Sure, I may be disabled, but I’ve gotten awards for snowboarding.
After struggling with depression and addiction, Greathouse found healing through recreational therapy.

Today, I spend my time volunteering with the VA helping veterans get through their struggles. I have my own home now. My kids and my mom have seen me crawling through a house; now they see me assisting others.
I lost more than a decade of my life to alcohol. Through recovery, I’ve learned that life’s too precious and losing one day is too much.
I joined the military out of a sense of service. And though I can’t continue to serve my country in that capacity anymore, I’ve dedicated my life to other veterans. I guide them through the process, counsel them or whatever is needed.
I want to be there and help them.
As told to NationSwell staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for clarity and style. Read more stories of service here.

10 Outstanding Solutions of 2017

Posted on by robbie

Across the country, changemakers are operating behind the scenes, working to solve some of America’s most daunting problems. They do so humbly, without seeking praise or notoriety. At NationSwell, we’ve always sought to elevate the innovation and tenacity of their efforts in the hopes of inspiring more people to action. Here, a celebration of the top work in 2017.
My Final Act of Service
Before Marine Corps veteran Anthony Egan dies, he has several lessons he wants to teach his son.
Disarmed: The Reclaiming of a City From Epic Gun Violence
In a community that’s experienced a 200 percent increase in the number of shootings in the past three years alone, ordinary residents are becoming peacekeepers.
The Rx for Better Birth Control
Colorado attempts to end the cycle of poverty by preventing unplanned pregnancy.
When Liberals and Conservatives Came Together on the Environment
Today’s politicians should look to the past for inspiration on how to achieve bipartisan legislation for the good of the planet.
From Blight to Beauty in the Motor City
It started with a dad protecting his family from drug dealers. Thirty years later, his revitalization efforts are still going strong.

An illustration inspired by the #metoo movement.

3 Ways to Show Empathy When Talking About Sexual Assault
The words used when speaking about sexual assault can have an impact on what others view as acceptable.
Neo-Nazi Music Is on the Rise. These Companies and People Are Taking It On
A former white supremacist fights back against the alt-right’s use of music to spread a message of hate.
A Prison With No Walls
Can a facility that relies on strict discipline instead of barbed wire and bars result in lower recidivism rates?
6 Stunning Art Projects That Are Making Cities Healthier
Cities across the nation recognize the revitalizing powers of beautiful community art.
The School Where Only Addicts Roam the Hallways
A cohort of sober youth confronts the realities of living drug free.

The Cultivation of Post-Military Lives

Posted on by robbie

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.”

Putting the Power of Positivity Into Focus

Posted on by robbie

It was 2012 when Nicole Riggs decided to seriously reevaluate her life. The year before, her mother passed away. So did her mother-in-law, a friend’s young daughter and the family dog. As 2012 got under way, Riggs’ fifth-grade son fell victim to school bullies, her stepson’s mother succumbed to ovarian cancer and Riggs’ marriage ended in divorce.
A renovation consultant at the time, Riggs began questioning her career choice, realizing that she no longer cared so much what color toilet someone wanted in their bathroom. “I saw no value in what I was doing. It wasn’t helping people who needed help,” says the New York City-based Riggs, who is also a NationSwell Council member. “It wasn’t offering a shining light to me, my sons or anyone else in the world dealing with loss or trauma.”
Riggs had always made time to volunteer with various nonprofits, including producing events for Team Rubicon, an organization that encourages veterans to serve on emergency teams that respond to natural disasters. But she found herself drawn to the idea of making documentary films ― specifically, she says, “issue-based films that do more than entertain.”
In 2015, Riggs founded Make It Happen, a transmedia production company committed to creating films that educate, engage and build solutions to social challenges. Inspired by her volunteer work with Team Rubicon, Riggs chose to center her first project ― a social campaign featuring 10 short films ― on the mental health of veterans. After hiring a videographer, she traveled the country, conducting interviews with each service member herself.
Instead of spotlighting the many difficulties facing soldiers as they transition back to civilian life, “we focused on their futures,” explains Riggs. “I wanted people to see positive role models they could emulate.”
The campaign, called Empower Our Vets, launched on Veteran’s Day in 2015. The first film profiled a retired Army sergeant who had struggled with survivor’s guilt after a grueling tour of duty in Iraq’s “Triangle of Death.” The turning point, he admitted, was finally talking to a therapist.
Soon after the three-and-a-half minute film was posted on Facebook, another veteran left a comment: “I’m getting ahold of the VA finally in the morning,” he wrote. “Seeing this made it sink in … I can only thank you.”
“That’s my proudest achievement as well as my greatest hope,” Riggs says. “If I saved one young man, maybe he’ll help somebody else.”

Cinematographer and editor Codi Barbini on the Greek set of My Intention Was Not to Leave.

Make It Happen’s most recent film, “My Intention Was Not to Leave,” tells the stories of three adolescent refugees ― one teenage boy from Iraq and two more from West Africa ― and their harrowing journey as unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Europe. Riggs and her film crew spent five days in Athens last summer, listening to the boys talk about their experiences with child slavery, brutal violence and ethnic cleansing. Despite the solemn subject matter, the film strikes an optimistic tone.
“It’s true I don’t have all the money and resources to succeed,” one of the boys acknowledges in the film. “But I have all the people I need to succeed.”
Riggs has a similar mission for Make It Happen.
“These films are vehicles to start conversations,” she says. “We want to engage regular audiences, policymakers and fund-raisers.”
Currently, Riggs is working with the nonprofit Concordia, which promotes public-private partnerships that drive social change, to screen the film in several cities across the globe, beginning with New York in late January. She’s also in talks with other organizations about not only sharing her films, but helping viewers understand how to take action.
“How can we teach adolescent refugees skills? How can they get an education? How can we engage communities to help?” asks Riggs. “I’m a big-picture person.”
Each of her films, she says, “offers hope that even in the face of something awful, there is the potential to overcome. It’s just a matter of hearing something positive.”
Nicole Riggs is a NationSwell Council member and the founder of Make It Happen, a transmedia production company that aims to inspire large-scale social change.