Posts Tagged Joining Forces
Sailor Transitions to Sonar After Navy
Posted by carol.bowers in Family Matters on August 23, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
When First Lady Michelle Obama and her “Joining Forces“ partners talk about service members needing transitioning into commercial work, they’re talking about people like Paul Michael Andrews.
First Lady Michelle Obama announces a major military employment milestone during a “Joining Forces” event on Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Fla., Aug. 22, 2012, reporting that more than 2,000 companies have hired 125,000 veterans and spouses through the campaign. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Ian W. Anderson
Andrews joined the military young and without a college degree. The Navy sent him to school to be a sonar technician, and he spent most of his six-year military career operating the world’s most sophisticated equipment to detect and track foreign submarines from the USS Roosevelt guided missile destroyer.
Andrews had two deployments: one to Somalia, and another to eastern Afghanistan to serve nine months working intelligence for a provincial reconstruction team.
The former petty officer knew he’d had “some awesome experiences” in the Navy, but when he decided to separate, he said, the thought of a civilian job search was filled with anxiety. Like many of his shipmates, he had never written a resume and didn’t know where to begin.
“We don’t spend time tweaking our resumes and building our professional networks,” he said. “Our network consists of the men and women we serve next to. Read the rest of this entry »
Spouses Find Kindred Spirits at Job Fairs
Posted by ldaniel in Family Matters on August 7, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
Aug. 7, 2012
Like many military spouses, Allison Lattuca doesn’t mention her husband’s Navy service as she job hunts with each forced relocation every few years.
“I don’t put it on my resume,” Lattuca told me at an Aug. 2 Chamber of Commerce Hiring Our Heroes’ job fair in Hampton, Va. “But if asked, I tell them the truth.”
Lattuca recently gave up her job at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Santa Barbara, Calif., to relocate to Hampton with her husband. “My job now is finding a job,” she said.
Lattuca’s resume shows a bachelor’s degree and years of work experience in investments and securities. But those years show gaps in employment that inevitably come up at job interviews. “Sometimes it does come back to haunt me,” she said. “They don’t want to put that kind of money into you, knowing you’ll be moving again.”
Laura Dempsey, director of military spouse for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, and Noreen O’Neil, the program’s events director, discuss events at the program’s job fair, Aug. 2, 2012, in Hampton, Va. Both are military spouses. DOD photo by Lisa Daniel
Lattuca’s employment challenges are common for military spouses. Thankfully, what is changing is employers’ willingness to deal with those challenges. That is due largely in part to the efforts of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, which partners with the Military Spouse Business Alliance, the Defense Department’s Military Spouse Employment Partnership and the first and second lady’s “Joining Forces” campaign to support military families. Together, this quartet provides a powerful support network for spouses who otherwise may find job-hunting a lonely endeavor.
What Lattuca and others found at the Aug. 2 job fair were people who understood their challenges – most either are or have been military members or spouses — and were willing to help. From a spouse networking event to workshops that gave career advice specific to them, spouses were among kindred spirits here.
They heard from spouses like Randi Klein, a former Navy officer whose husband served as a submariner for 33 years, who told them about In Gear Career, a nonprofit that gives networking and career help to spouses. And Stefanie Goebel, another former Navy officer, who gave a presentation on the Chamber’s eMentor leadership program for spouses and veterans. Then there were the hiring officials themselves. Nearly every organization seemed to have a person who either served in the military or was a military spouse. There was Andrea Hall, a CSC recruiter who was an Army spouse for 21 years, and Lockette Dickerson, a Navy wife and human resources associate for the Navy Exchange.
Shronda Walker, who is new to the military, said she felt optimistic after attending the fair. Her husband, Marshaun, joined the Navy 15 months ago and Shronda recently joined him here from their hometown of Buffalo, N.Y. They can get by on his income, she said, but she would prefer to work. They don’t have children and the days alone can drag on while Marshaun works 13-hour shifts, she said.
“I’d like to have something to do,” Shronda, 23, said. “There’s only so much cooking and cleaning you can do.”
Walker and Lattuca represent some 85 percent of military spouses that the Defense Department, Chamber, and Joining Forces officials say surveys show either want or need to work.
Lattuca isn’t surprised by the high percentage.
“Yes, I want and need to work,” she said. “We like to go to restaurants and the movies, and to maintain a good lifestyle. And, it’s important to my self-worth and self-value that I can come home at the end of the day and feel like I’ve contributed.”
The combined efforts of the Chamber, DOD and the White House are giving spouses that choice.
Joining Forces Exceeds Expectations, Director Says
Posted by carol.bowers in Family Matters on July 27, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
When First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden started the “Joining Forces” campaign 15 months ago, they did so with the goal of creating impactful and lasting health, education and employment support for military families.
The campaign had two significant achievements this week that its director, Navy Capt. Brad Cooper, told me hit both of those marks.
First, North Carolina became the 26th state to pass a law making it easier for military spouses to transfer their professional licenses. (Read more.) South Carolina and Hawaii passed similar laws in recent weeks, potentially affecting tens of thousands of military spouses, Cooper said. With similar legislation pending in California, Ohio and New Jersey, the campaign is “exceeding our expectations” in getting laws passed in all 50 states by the end of 2014, he said.
“As I take step back and look this – and my dad was an Army officer – this signals a pretty remarkable cultural shift,” Cooper said. “I remember my mother — as well as my wife, spouses of my friends — were reluctant even to indicate they were military spouses” to prospective employers, he said.
Second, the National Association of Social Workers, at its annual convention here this week, announced it is launching a free, online training course for all social workers to better understand the unique needs of military families. It also is providing a set of standards for working with veterans and military families, and is creating a professional Credential for Social Work with Veterans and Military Families. (Read more.)
Social workers are considered the nation’s frontline mental health services providers, and they practice in every county in the country. The NASW represents 650,000 of them. Its pledge to Joining Forces follows that of the four largest nursing associations, representing 3 million nurses, and the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, with 105 and 25 schools, respectively, in training doctors to serve military families and veterans. The Association of Marriage and Therapy Therapists also has signed on, as well as associations representing psychiatrists, psychologists and surgeons.
“This really represents, to me, not just the impactful piece, but the sustaining piece,” Cooper said.
Spouses’ and veterans’ employment also has made major strides, Cooper said. More than 2,000 companies have signed on already hiring 25,000 spouses and 65,000 veterans, and pledging to hire another 175,000 in the next two years, helping bring down the veterans’ unemployment rate, he said.
“This really is the largest outreach and advocacy efforts we’ve had on behalf of veterans and their families for years,” Cooper said.
Joining Forces has been successful, he said, because “we’ve been able to breach through years and years of bureaucracy and bring people together and focus them on the effort.” All they needed was leadership and direction, he added.
“People, generally, want to be helpful,” Cooper said. “They don’t always know what they can do. Our objective is to steer them to meaningful action.”
Joining Forces’ efforts have caught the attention of military spouses.
Network Helps Spouses Remain Lawyers
Posted by carol.bowers in Family Matters on June 27, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
Lori Volkman was in college when she confronted what some would approach as an either-or situation: marry the Navy pilot she’d fallen in love with, or head for law school for the career she was passionate about.
Volkman had grown up in a Navy family and she knew she couldn’t have it both ways – at least not at the same time. “I knew exactly what was involved in that,” she told me when we spoke on Monday.
Not only would frequent relocations prevent her from practicing law, “I didn’t even know if we’d be anywhere long enough for me to finish law school,” she said. “I knew as Navy brat that there was a very real possibility of having only two-year duty stations.”
So Volkman and her husband came to an agreement: he would leave active duty for the Navy reserves, and she would go to law school.
Volkman, the deputy prosecuting attorney for Clark County in Washington state, says she is both fortunate and atypical of military spouse lawyers. “I’m one of the few who have enjoyed working in the same place for 12 years,” she said.
Just over a year ago, Volkman signed on to helping other military spouses pursue their careers in law after Erin Wirth, a federal administrative law judge and Coast Guard wife, asked her to join her and Mary Reding, another military spouse attorney, in starting The Military Spouse JD Network. Wirth had moved seven times in 15 years, and sometimes did not relocate with her husband, to maintain her law career even when it meant taking jobs below her experience level, Volkman said. Read the rest of this entry »
Spouses Seeing More Job Choices
Posted by ldaniel in Uncategorized on May 21, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
May 21, 2012
Exciting changes are underway for military spouses that could affect families who serve for generations to come.
It used to be, in the not-so-distant past, that a decision to marry into the military was a decision to not have a career of your own. Even if a spouse could juggle the demands of military home life plus a paid position, who would hire her (95 percent are female, according to Defense Department figures) knowing she would be gone in a couple of years due to a forced military relocation? And how would she even get to the point of applying for a job if she had to renew her professional license – nurse, teacher, realtor, therapist, just to name a few with such requirements — in every new state?
Both of those employment hurdles are getting lower as Defense Department, White House and nonprofit entities rally state legislators and the corporate and business communities to make things easier.
Through the work of DOD’s Military Community and Family Policy office and Michelle Obama and Jill Biden’s “Joining Forces” campaign, 16 states have passed laws to improve professional license portability and another 11 have legislation pending. Also, DOD’s Military Spouse Employment Partnership last week added 34 employer “partners” for a total of 128 that post jobs on the site specific to military spouses. As part of the program, the employers – CACI, General Dynamics, Dell, Microsoft, American Red Cross, GEICO, and Sterling Medical are just a few — agree that their positions can move with hired spouses.
The catalyst for change has been the spouses themselves who spoke up about the need. Indeed, DOD officials say 85 percent of military spouses have responded that they either want or need a paid job. Read the rest of this entry »
National Parks Make Great Family Getaways
Posted by ldaniel in Family Matters on May 16, 2012
By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
Great Falls National Park, Va., is one of 327 parks in the National Park Service system. April 14, 2012. Photo by Lisa Daniel
Ask people what their all-time favorite family vacation has been and chances are good national parks will be in most of the answers. I don’t have any science to back that up, but I have been struck by the number of people who recollect their best memories of family bonding in places like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon.
Somehow, even traveling for hours in a cramped car with cranky kids seems to vanish from the memories of those who have experienced America’s most magnificent places. From the peaks of Alaska’s Denali to the lowlands of Florida’s Everglades, the National Park Service’s 397 national parks and many thousands of historical and archaeological sites and wetlands were each brought into the federal system because they are the best of the best – those places deemed worthy of protecting for everyone to see.
That’s exactly what Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had in mind when he announced yesterday that the $80 annual pass for all the national parks and public lands will be waived for active-duty military members and their dependents, starting May 19, Armed Forces Day.
Great Falls National Park, Va., is one of 327 parks in the National Park Service system. April 14, 2012. Photo by Lisa Daniel
Salazar said he hopes military members and their families will visit the parks and public lands for fun, rest and relaxation, family bonding, and to experience those places America holds dear. As the Interior secretary said, these are “the very places they not only defend, but that they own.”
The World War II generation had a close connection to the parks, National Park Service Director John Jarvis said, because some military training was done there – such as when the 10th Mountain Division trained on Mount Ranier in Washington – and some places were reserved for a time only for returning service members and their families. Also, the federal government then made a push to improve the parks and add infrastructure for the returning warriors.
“If you talk to folks of that generation, they came back, had kids, got in the station wagon, and did the national park tours,” Jarvis said.
Officials hope today’s generation of troops and families make the same connections. And with national parks – 84 million acres of land and 4.5 million acres of oceans, lakes and reservoirs — in every state except Delaware, many are just a day trip, or less, away.
So, why wait? Play hooky on your Saturday chores, let the kids miss soccer practice, pry the electronics out of their hands, and hop in the SUV. Those mountain trails, battlefields, nature preserves and historic homes are just around the corner.
First Lady Thanks Nation for ‘Outpouring’ of Military Support
Posted by in Family Matters on April 13, 2012
By Elaine Sanchez
April 13, 2012
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks marks the first anniversary of the "Joining Forces" campaign with an event at the White House, April 11, 2012. The First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, launched the campaign last April to rally national support to for service members, veterans and their families. DOD photo by Linda Hosek
First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife, marked the one-year anniversary of their Joining Forces campaign this week with a renewed call to action and a message of gratitude to the nation.
“The hours logged, the services donated, the love and devotion and offers to help that have poured in from every corner of the country — all of that has far surpassed even our wildest expectations,” Obama said at an anniversary event on the South Lawn of the White House April 11.
I vividly remember attending the launch of this military-support initiative last year at the White House. Flanked by their husbands and senior military leaders, the first and second ladies announced their intent to raise awareness of military families and to spur Americans to better support troops, veterans and their families for years to come.
“This campaign is about all of us, all of us joining together as Americans to give back to the extraordinary military families who serve and sacrifice so much every day so we can live in freedom and security,” the first lady said at the time.
This week, the first lady and Dr. Biden celebrated the campaign’s anniversary with the White House event, followed by a whirlwind two-day tour across the nation. They spoke to everyone from military spouses and teens, to nurses seeking to provide better care for military families, to late-night talk show hosts, including satirist Stephen Colbert.
But fanfare aside, their intent was simple: to spread a message of gratitude for the “outpouring of support” Americans gave military families over the past year.
At the anniversary event, the first lady ticked off a list of contributions from the past year:
– More than 1,600 businesses have hired more than 50,000 veterans and spouses, and have pledged to hire at least 160,000 more in the coming years;
– Technology and employment companies such as Google, Monster and LinkedIn have stepped up to help connect veterans with jobs;
– State leaders are passing legislation to ease employment woes for military spouses with professional licenses moving across state borders;
– Medical schools are training health care providers so they can better care for military families;
– The Defense, Veterans Affairs, Treasury and Labor departments all have made “groundbreaking” announcements to support veterans, wounded warriors, caregivers and military spouses;
– Associations of doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants and social workers are working to improve treatment for post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries;
– TV shows such as “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Sesame Street” and organizations such as NASCAR, AOL and Disney are sharing military families’ stories; and
– Stars such as Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg have appeared in a series of popular public service announcements.
“If I had to sum up what we have seen since launching Joining Forces in one word, it would be ‘inspiring,’” Dr. Biden said at the anniversary event. “These efforts aren’t always in the headlines, but they support our military families every single day in real and meaningful ways.”
While a powerful gauge of the nation’s commitment, Joining Forces’ true impact can’t be measured in numbers of hours served, the first lady said. “The true measure of our success lies in the lives that we’ve helped to change.”
The first lady reiterated her call to action by asking Americans “to keep raising the bar” through actions big and small.
“We’re going to keep driving forward until all of our nation’s military families feel in real and concrete ways the love and support and gratitude that we all hold in our hearts,” the first lady said, calling Joining Forces a “forever proposition.” “That is our simple promise to you.”
New Job Push to Benefit Military Spouses
Posted by in Family Matters on April 5, 2012
By Elaine Sanchez
April 4, 2012
First Lady Michelle Obama yesterday unveiled a new hiring effort that will deliver thousands of portable, flexible job opportunities to military spouses.
Eleven companies have pledged more than 15,000 jobs for military spouses and veterans, the first lady said. The good news for spouses is the vast majority of these jobs – in areas such as customer support and telemarketing — can be accomplished from home.
Other jobs will be in contact centers located near military installations, and offer family-friendly scheduling, growth opportunities and the ability to transfer seamlessly from one center to another
This commitment will make a “huge difference” for military spouses, Obama said during a teleconference announcing this effort. “Having an opportunity to have a decent job … is one of the most important ways we can support these families,” she said.
Sites Connect Spouses With Jobs
Posted by in Family Matters on February 13, 2012
By Elaine Sanchez
Feb. 13, 2012
Over the past year, veterans and military spouses have been invited to a host of career fairs across the nation that connect dozens of employers seeking to support the military community with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of job-seeking troops and spouses.
While face-to-face exposure is an asset, many career seekers aren’t able to attend these fairs, whether it’s due to distance, finances or life demands.
Hoping to fill this opportunity gap, organizations are forgoing local fairs in favor of online offerings. With the only potential barrier being Internet access, virtual career fairs and other online job resources are steadily gaining popularity.
Milicruit, a sponsor of virtual career fairs, hosted a national career fair in November that attracted about 80 employers and more than 30,000 job seekers.
They’ll host another nationwide virtual career fair for service members, veterans and military spouses Feb. 23 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST.
Military Caregivers to Gain More Support
Posted by in Family Matters on January 31, 2012
By Elaine Sanchez
Jan. 31, 2012
Caregivers of wounded warriors often make great sacrifices to be at their loved one’s side. They quit their jobs, sell their homes and leave family members and friends behind, often for years at a time.
Yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama and other senior leaders gathered to honor the service and sacrifice of these military caregivers. Alongside Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, the first lady announced a proposal that would enable more military family members to take the time they need to care for their wounded and ill loved ones.
“We want to recognize the extraordinary dedication, sacrifice and service of our nation’s caregivers, not simply with words, but with deeds,” the first lady told the audience gathered at the Labor Department in Washington, D.C. “These are men and women and children who will do anything for their loved ones, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice, no matter the consequences.”