A few days ago I received an e-mail from one of our TMV editors asking me if I would respond to a request from “Survivor Corps” to share news about their organization and about a specific program of that organization, “Operation Survivor.”
As one who has done his best to publicize the plight of our veterans, and especially the sorry treatment they have received from an administration that sent them into harm’s way and that touted “support the troops,” but didn’t, I am glad to do it, and only sorry that it has taken me three days to do so.
If you go to the “Survivor Corps” web site, you’ll learn the following facts:
First, about “Survivor Corps”:
Survivor Corps helps people around the world who have suffered war and violence to rebuild their lives and rejoin their communities. By connecting those affected by conflict through networks of survivors, they help people overcome trauma and injury and regain their place in society. Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Network) was born out of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and recently spearheaded the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the past ten years, they have established successful peer support programs in eight war affected countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Now, to the more recent work by this organization, “Operation Survivor”:
First, some background:
Within the United States there are over one and a half million service members that have served in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over thirty thousand have been physically wounded, but many more have experienced less visible, psychological wounds. Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have emerged as signature injuries of these conflicts, with recent reports suggesting an increase in rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, and domestic violence among returning service members and veterans.
Ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating a generation of veterans in the United States from all branches of the armed services and all 50 states who are struggling to overcome physical and psychosocial injuries. Most combat veterans convalescing in military hospitals across the country will survive physically, but getting on with their lives after returning home to their families and communities is proving a significant challenge for hundreds of thousands. Among the 1.6 million who have served since 2001, suicide is on the rise, as is unemployment and incidents of substance abuse and domestic violence
Survivor Corps feels that the successful reintegration of returning service members is “an issue that will have a long-lasting impact on American society, and may become the single defining struggle facing this new generation of veterans.”
Thus, Survivor Corps and its partners are determined to avoid the mistakes made when veterans returned from Vietnam, which resulted in tens of thousands of post-war suicides and over 200,000 men and women living on the streets.
To avoid such mistakes, Survivor Corps will build peer support programs at the community level that will bring service members and veterans together for mutual support and encourage both individual responsibility and collective action to help others in need.
It is offering an alternative “treatment” that can be made readily available in all communities, regardless of proximity to traditional military or government centers of support. Their approach is nimble enough to address the needs of individual survivors, while still broad enough to build a coalition of survivors and service providers working to effect long-term positive change.
To learn more about “Survivor Corps” and about their new program to help the recovery and reintegration of hundreds of thousands of returning U.S. service members at a critical time for them and their country, please go to SurvivorCorps.org. You may even talk yourself into donating to this worthy program
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.