Calling All Veteran Leaders

Opening Insights: Honoring Our Heroes

I think there is one higher office than president
and I would call that PATRIOT.
GARY HART

Veterans are a national treasure. We owe them much for the life, liberties and freedoms we have today. Yet, many vets struggle to return to the real world. The adjustment back to the norm can be challenging for many and seem insurmountable for others.

Many vets struggle to let go of their in-service experiences and reintegrate into society. They begin to question life, its meaning and their place in it. Dealing with the challenges of loss, trauma, war and the past can become overwhelming. Without an ever-present and consistent support system, community and/or brotherhood to buddy up with life becomes hopeless and many give up.

The Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World (VCW) is an online outreach program that connects and supports “Veteran Villages” and communities.

This program is offered by AwareComm® and funded by philanthropy, local businesses, educational institutions and organizations working in partnership with community leaders. In collaboration with its partners, AwareComm offers a FREE Collaboration Laboratory (Co-Lab™) that stimulates and grows community and brotherhood to support veterans and their families.

Informational Insights: Veteran Realities

Veterans face many issues. Five of the primary challenges are listed below:

1. Alcohol, Drug and Other Dependencies and Addictions
2. Homelessness
   • 11% of the homeless adult population are veterans¹
   • 20% of the male homeless population are veterans¹
   • 68% reside in principal cities¹
   • 32% reside in suburban/rural areas¹
   • 51% of individual homeless veterans have disabilities¹
   • 50% have serious mental illness¹
   • 70% have substance abuse problems¹
   • 57% are white males, compared to 38% of non-veterans¹
   • 50% are age 51 or older, compared to 19% non-veterans¹
     

3. Unemployment
4. High Rates of Suicide, Mental Health Issues (PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, etc.)
   • Suicide: 20 veterans a day die from suicide²
5. Community Isolation

Without addressing these 5 key challenges, we can never truly help our veterans and honor the sacrifices that they made for our freedom, liberty and future. Providing a comprehensive solution, the Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World (VCW) addresses these 5 Focus Areas of veteran support:

1. Sobriety – many vets develop dependencies to cope with a world that doesn’t make sense
2. Homes – across the nation, veteran homelessness is a growing phenomenon – it is a real challenge for vets to carry out their next mission (life) without first establishing a base of operations
3. Jobs – veterans go from having a clearly defined mission while in service to no purpose, no direction, no reason, no greater purpose…
4. PTSD – post traumatic stress is a debilitating state, but it is reversible using proven EMDR methodology – no veteran PTSD sufferer should bear this burden
5. Community – many veterans are alone and unable to establish meaningful relationships in the “real world” (a world of narcissism and selfishness)

Overview of The Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World

The Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World (VCW) is an app-based platform + process + managed service that allows for an [eco]system of support where all participants experience unity and empowerment. The collaborative platform provides the optimum environment to:

The Co-Lab™ platform plus process includes deliverable eModular Apps (eMods™) that support perceptions, thinking and communicating with proven and accepted values, principles and relational models.

The Co-Lab™ architecture allows all stakeholders to seamlessly connect and integrate multiple complex platforms into a single [eco]system: Communication Tracking, Analytics and Reporting (complete with sentience measurement).

The Co-Lab™ Executive team is currently being assembled as illustrated below:

Community Development

The Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World (VCW) brings the community together under a common mission, vision and set of goals. It enables communities and representatives of the community to collaborate and create comprehensive programs tailored to meet the specific needs of all stakeholders. Incubator participation, Buddy App customization and development are funded by a balance of crowdfunding, community contributions and grants.

The VCW features pre-programmed Employee Assistance Resource (E.A.R.) templates that allow for cost-effective, quick, easy and collaborative program development that:

• Dramatically reduces development costs
• Insures comprehensive application (app) customization
• Incorporates a wide range of powerful plug-in enhancements
• Reduces support and maintenance costs while improving partner satisfaction

The VCW distributes an E.A.R. App to all stakeholders. The E.A.R. offers free Human Resource (HR) App-ortunities to businesses, organizations and schools. It provides Research Applications that give human resource departments the power to understand their members. The E.A.R. is an app-based digital dashboard, developed and customized for participant-driven learning engagement in the Co-Lab. This ensures 100% stakeholder agreement and investment in the Resources and Programs. Learn more about the E.A.R.

The design and implementation of the
Veterans Co-Lab™ of the World (VCW) is a
WIN-WIN-WIN for everybody!

Businesses WIN because they get the resources, applications, tools and training:

• Employees and their Families Benefit – Personal Learning Technology (PLT)
• Fulfills Social Cultural Responsibility (Corporate Social Responsibility)
• Allows Charity Investment to Yield and ROI + a measurable humanitarian ROI
• Boosts organization image and establishes community presence and recognition

Communities WIN because the E.A.R. strengthens, unites and builds communities.

• Enhances recovery – building a strong foundation for living a healthy life
• Collects demographic data for recovery optimization and effectiveness
• Qualitative information to validate goals and cost-effectiveness for funding
• Improve program effectiveness, expand grant and fundraising opportunities

Veterans WIN through access to technology partnerships with the shared goal of providing a holistic approach to veteran support through attention to the 5 Focus Areas:

• Sobriety – recovering from dependencies on alcohol, drugs, technology, gambling, etc.
• Homes – providing a stable foundation of security for reintegration into society
• Jobs – establishing a reason to get up in the morning, to learn and grow
• PTSD – resolving stored and debilitating traumatic experiences
• Community – introducing a brotherhood of support, cohesiveness, trust, safety and the reliability of the unit

Using advanced communications technology and learning methodology, the VCW offers its partners comprehensive E.A.R. solutions to support, enhance and augment existing programs with tools for:

• PTSD Rehabilitation
• Addiction Rehabilitation
• HealthCare Rehabilitation
• Leadership Rehabilitation
• Educational Rehabilitation
• Legal Rehabilitation
• Financial Rehabilitation
• Job and Skills Training
• Legacy Publishing (Personal, Skills & Educational Publishing)
• KEEPING THE BROTHERHOOD TOGETHER

The VCW E.A.R. is developed and customized FOR veteran communities, BY veteran communities in a Collaboration Laboratory (Co-Lab). This ensures 100% stakeholder agreement and investment in the Resources and Programs.

Research-Driven: Social Cultural Responsible Projects

The battle to find funding for social projects is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s world. What if we had access to consistently reliable funding sources? What if we could fund research to develop solutions to our social problems that would result in a duplicatable, transferable and scalable methodology (packaged and deliverable) that becomes:

• Self-Funding (Organization Investment & Private Donations)
• Self-Perpetuating (Attraction Based on Proven Success)
• Self-Regulating (Resulting in Active Membership Contribution)

This approach attracts purpose-driven investors wanting to experience their seed funding result in ongoing benefits capable of becoming self-sustaining after the initial startup phase. Seed not Feed.

This approach clearly defines:

• The Problem
• The Cause of the Problem
• The Cost of the Problem
  • Socially
  • Individually
• The Social Benefits of the Planned Outcome to:
  • The Community
  • Individual Participants
• The Cost Return on Investment (ROI)
  • The Community
  • Individual Participants
• Research Analytics with Elements of Influence
  • Beginning Sentient
  • Progress Sentient
  • Conclusion Sentient
  • Ongoing Implementation

This solution empowers Veteran Communities to obtain a sustainable VCW.

Research Considerations

Veteran reintegration and wisdom transfer relies on research and evidence-based practices. Today, we see the need for data science to go beyond algorithms and focus on how data is collected to ensure confirmation bias is reduced and skewed data is minimized.

AwareComm^® is revolutionizing the data science world with its patent-pending Sentient Analysis™ data gathering and analysis process. The process incorporates the Socratic Method and copyrighted relational models to effectively quantify human behavior. It supports and empowers rather than manipulating like contemporary data analysis methods. In addition to learning what people are thinking and doing, Sentient Analysis™ allows us to discern WHY people think and do the things they do.

Encouraging research and development, AwareComm^® provides a quick, easy and effective way (see model below) to establish and fund Co-Labs as research institutes. The model ensures Co-Labs are implemented, funded and sustained through community partnerships with businesses and universities. This symbiotic relationship ensures sustainability of all stakeholders through re-investment and recurring benefits from the partnership.

Mentoring in the VCW

Veterans’ inherent wisdom, discipline and diversity of experience holds incredible value to communities around the world. They have so much to teach us. It is important that we not only package and present the content, but transfer the wisdom in a way that it can be applied to the lives of people: young and old, near and far.

The VCW provides a mentorship model for supporting Applied Knowledge Transfer™ through transformational and experiential learning. It provides training for veterans and employees from businesses across the community to become effective mentors. This benefits participants directly, but also follows the mentor back into their workplace, seeding their organization culture in parallel with the principles of Honesty, Selflessness, Understanding, Purity of Intent, and Living in Reality they learned in the Co-Lab. The benefit reaches across the whole community.

Sources
¹//nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics
²//www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/2016suicidedatareport.pdf

Possibilities for Consideration: Empowering Our Heroes

Veterans are accustomed to a life of service to their country. An investment in your community’s veterans is a long-term investment in your community.

• What if we could consistently leverage a holistic approach to veteran support through the 5 Focus Areas (Sobriety, Housing, Jobs, PTSD, Community)?
• What if we could place knowledgeable, mature people of vision and integrity in every small to medium sized business in your community?
• What if we could begin to heal our communities by first healing our heroes?
• What if we could nurture the spirit of community ownership though an investment in its leadership?

Add Your Insight: Uniting in Service and Appreciation…

“Regard your soldiers as your children,
and they will follow you into the deepest valleys.
Look on them as your own beloved sons,
and they will stand by you even unto death!”
SUN TZU