America's Warrior Partnership is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to empowering and supporting military veterans and their families. The team of dedicated professionals provides a range of programs and services to help veterans transition to civilian life, including career development, mental health support, and community engagement. Their director of community integration, Kaitlin Cashwell, joins the show today to discuss various aspects of what their organization provides to the veteran population.

Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:

https://www.americaswarriorpartnership.org

https://www.americaswarriorpartnership.org/deep-dive

https://www.missionrollcall.org/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlin-hope-e-cashwell-b4411839/

Transcript from Episode 84 with Kaitlin Cashwell:

Keith McKeever 0:01

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the battle buddy podcast, you want to you want to catch this one. This is a great nonprofit we're going to highlight today. And as you know if you've been following me for a while, I absolutely love talking to people with nonprofits, especially those really deep into the veteran space. We've got America's warrior partnership on today. So stay tuned. And let's learn a little bit about what they've got going on. Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. So today, I'm joined by Caitlin, cash flow, Director of Community Integration, correct? Yes. All right. Awesome. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with America's Water Partnership?

Kaitlin Cashwell 0:42

Yeah, first of all, Keith, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for recognizing that nonprofits need all the help they can get when it comes to highlighting the great work that they do. So I have been with the organization since inception, holding various roles actually started as the CEOs, executive assistant. And so it's helpful to kind of know all the ins and outs of the organization, and the Community Integration Program, which is the foundational model. And it's kind of what I do every day now, with branches. And so we have community branches across the country, directly supporting veterans, and then corporate initiatives, practically engaging veterans in the workplace. And then we have training initiatives, we actually have a training later today, to help communities just grow what they already are doing to better support veterans upstream, to improve their quality of life and to prevent veteran suicide.

Keith McKeever 1:36

Awesome. So you since you've been there since the beginning of troops, and all kinds of crazy ideas come and go. Definitely been there. From the beginning. You've seen every aspect, I'm sure. What a nutshell, is America's way partnership kind of hinted at a few different things there to get, take that little extra level deeper there for us.

Kaitlin Cashwell 1:59

Yeah, of course. So our mission is to partner with communities to prevent veterans suicide. And we recognized most recently through an evaluation great that our model, focusing proactive and holistic leads to improved hope, improved quality of life and suicide prevention. So with America's warrior partnerships, mission, we kind of take that community integration model. Throughout all of our initiatives. Currently, we have the National Network, which is working with communities to connect veterans down to their community, and then connect communities to additional resources when the resource does not exist or has been exhausted. So if you're in a community in rural areas, or tribal areas, you know, not all of the things exist, that are in like a big city like Atlanta, Georgia. So really helping the VSOs, which kind of hold the ground in some of those rural communities, helping them get connected to additional support. And then we currently have community integration, which I just talked about. And then we have Operation Deep Dive, which is a suicide prevention research study. It is really understanding at the community level, how a veteran before they died by suicide was interacting within the community. That's one aspect. And then another aspect is looking at data from the matching medical examiner's information to the DOD and confirming their status as a veteran, this actually looks into non natural causes of death as well. So not just suicide, so overdose, vehicle testing

Keith McKeever 3:53

to figure out because overdose could be suicide. Exactly intentional or unintentional. Which you probably agree with me, you know, the 22. A day number is a very underreported number. This is what the VA knows, it doesn't take into account things like that. The unintentional suicides and things like that,

Kaitlin Cashwell 4:13

right. And they don't research that. And so it's just different, what we research from Operation Deep Dive. And we also don't consider their discharge status. So it's anybody that ever served. So that's what they're looking at on the operation deep dive team. And I'm not an SME in Operation Deep Dive, but I actually reap the benefits of the findings of Operation Deep Dive because they help us understand what maybe we could implement within communities and to train other communities on how to just work more upstream. And to consider those things you know, substance abuse is something that is trending recently we've been doing trainings on that to just get communities to start thinking about, you know, what resources they would tap into, to report some of that going on.

Keith McKeever 5:02

Absolutely. I hit on a couple of points. Before I asked him the question of Operation Deep Dive, you mentioned rural communities and tribal lands and all kinds of other places in between, they have a lack of resources. I just had a friend of mine share on Facebook, one of micros, Facebook shows that he was running, I don't know, if he's still doing it, it was from a couple years ago. And the lady was like, hour and a half south of Detroit or something like that. And she was in a small community, like 20,000 people in the community. And there was nothing, you know, a lot of a lot of guys were a lot of veterans were like, No, I gotta go across town for food pantry, or I gotta go, you know, go all the way to Detroit for this or that, you know, it's, it's not an uncommon thing around this country. So it's great to have those resources in a smaller communities and figure out what for those people who just don't have, you know, a vehicle, or to find a way to travel three hours?

Kaitlin Cashwell 6:04

Exactly, yeah, yeah. So the network is there in the places that we can't be, you know, we can't be in every community. But navigation, you're right is is a lot of the hard part. And community integration model really helps to understand the veterans in the community, and know where those gaps are, and where the barriers are to access are, for example, one of our affiliates in Buffalo, they helped advocate for the bus route to be changed. Because the veterans in a particular community couldn't get to the VA. And just they had to take like, I think, an extra two and a half hours to get their route, right, to get to the VA and then let alone just have a VA appointment, which takes a long time. So they were able to work with leadership in the community that to kind of say this is a barrier, how can we get a direct route for these veterans to meet that need? But yeah, it is the navigation process. The understanding what even is out there is a lot of what we've we've kind of worked to tackle with communities.

Keith McKeever 7:10

Guess what I liked about learn a little bit about your organization, when we talked before, with website and with consensus, there's something like 50,000 veteran nonprofits out there. And what most of what you're doing is gathering data, interpreting it, and figuring out how to connect people to the resources, you know, all these other nonprofits, or government agencies and all these things that are out there, because the help is out there. It's just finding it. I've been doing this show for two years now, I've only interviewed, you know, a couple of dozen nonprofits out of 50,000. There's a lot of other people that are doing amazing stuff out there that just nobody knows about. All right, great, great to have, you know, kind of bridge that gap. Do that. Be a bridge somebody to get the access they need? Because I can't imagine not being able to drive a car and have to figure out, okay, I'm here. How do I? How many buses do I have to get on to get to my VA clinic in order to get on their shuttle bus to go three hours or four or five hours to the to the main hospital and instead spend a day there? Or two, you know, I know people like that, that have to jump through some hoops like that, or catch rides with people. And you just have so much time flexibility. I mean, so there's a lot of access issues. For people, I think that's one of the big ones. So, but the Operation Deep Dive, I know you're not the subject matter expert in it, but is there anything that you're aware of this kind of come out of that that's kind of interesting, or shocking, or eye opening? About what they're finding on those spaces.

Kaitlin Cashwell 8:48

So, um, you know, National Guard is one of them. That's something that we all kind of knew that we were seeing, the biggest finding that we've kind of seen out of operation, deep dive is the everybody kind of measures things differently. Um, so like you like you were talking about with measurement. I'm glad you get it. I was like smiling a little bit, because it's hard to kind of see, you know, the why and the purpose of of that data and being proactive. But we found that there was a program in one of the states that only asked if the person that was deceased served in the army. That's it. They didn't ask if they served in the military. They didn't ask if they served in the Navy, they just wanted to know if they served in the army. And so you can't really investigate that data because you don't have the whole picture. And so that's kind of one of the things that Operation Deep Dive has been advocating for is just kind of, you know, getting the whole picture bringing everyone together, you know, they're partnering with the DoD A lot of other people are working with the team to just come together and and piece the puzzle together so that we can have that viewpoint to look upstream.

Keith McKeever 10:15

There's nothing like data you got, maybe I'm just kind of a nerve, but you can't, you can't make educated decisions and take action on something if you don't have the clear data. But, you know, of course, got to just work through it. You know, it just takes time and processes and changing policies or hoop you know, whoever will that was it was tracking just army. That's kind of ridiculous. Yes, they make up a good portion of veterans. Yeah. But, you know, you're forget about all the other branches. You know, and I don't know, maybe, maybe that was just somebody who just gets stuck in that mindset. On some civilians who don't have any interaction with military veteran community will just kind of lump everybody into army, which is frustrating. Any veteran listening to this or watching this knows exactly how I feel? It's frustrating, you earn that title of marine or airman or sailor, you know, you brush it off most of the time. But when you hear something like that, it's like, what about those Marines? What about those sailors, the Coast Guardsmen, the airmen, we earned those titles? Yeah, it'd be a simple, simple fix from Army to armed forces. And then you should hopefully catch everybody putting

Kaitlin Cashwell 11:32

it up. That's, and that's some of the beauty of of you know, that that model that I talked about, we do a four step plan of Connect, educate, advocate, collaborate, and the education, to the community of things like that, because not everybody served in the military. And the amount of people that are military connected is declining every day. I mean, we did a poll through our mission rollcall program, just identifying that the younger generations do not know somebody that served in the military. And so just the education is going to become more and more relevant to understand and bridge that gap.

Keith McKeever 12:09

Well, you know, I saw somewhere trying to get the numbers as close as I can. There's something like 90 million veterans out there. But we had 16 million that served during World War Two, we're now we're down 250,000. You know, if you've got a website out there, you can track that we're losing 200 Plus more two veterans a day. And a few days, in a few years, we won't have any of them left. You know, so the total numbers at 19 19 billion or so veterans is something like 5%, give or take of our population. But I know in my generation, everyone kind of refers to like a wall less than the 1%. Because you're right, like, there's less of us people. We didn't need 16 Thank goodness, we didn't need 16 million people to fight the war on terror. You know, that was a whole different ballgame. But yeah, there's, there's there's a lot of misinformation out there. So I love that you guys are doing that to kind of correct some people along the way.

Kaitlin Cashwell 13:11

Yeah. And then to them to feel like you're a part of it. I mean, every holiday I put have an excuse to like put up flags, if it's art versus Day, Labor Day, just to kind of be that example. I mean, it takes each and every one of us to hold on to that. And both my grandfather served in the military, I have two brother in laws that served. And so I want my kids to understand how much of an honor that is and how it is a piece of our country, and we should respect it.

Keith McKeever 13:42

That's awesome. Well, every parent should do that. They should take their children take the time to teach their children about military service. And the sacrifices and wasn't even I was lucky enough that I took my oldest to you got to fill fill an extra seat on an Honor Flight and went with me. You know, so every time I step into Arlington National Cemetery, I mean, it looks really pretty much the same every time. But it's a different feeling every time and it's just, you know, there's nothing like going in there. If anybody's had been in there. They know. They know the feeling. You know, but halfway through that trip at the Vietnam War, he put his arm around me and said, I know why you guys volunteer. Like something conducted in him of like, I get why people serve I get, you know, he kind of picked up even at a young age, like this connection of why you serve, how important it is why veterans are so connected to each other. So but of course, when there's a lack of connection that leads to lots of problems. So like, lack of connection to community, you know, I know that's a big one is community integration that you deal with, but you break that down more for us what you're doing in your department. So the integration stuff.

Kaitlin Cashwell 14:58

Yeah, of course. Um, You're making me a little teary eyed though with the Arlington because one of our board members, Leo Kay horses, he was metal honor recipient and a POW for six years. He was buried there. And I was very fortunate to be a part of of that. But yes, like at the same, same ah, I'm going going there. But I'm glad your son got to experience that. So connectedness, yes, community integration really emphasizes the connectedness piece. We know that strong relationships, spiritually, spirituality and purpose, you know, connected to yourself, is a piece of our holistic model. I've been studying hope for what I think it's been nine years, we've been doing our annual survey and understanding, you know, what affects hope in a positive way, and what affects it in a negative way. Because I am more of a hope expert than a suicide expert. But we are studying the living through that survey, and understanding both that there's a will and a way when it comes to hope. So the model with these advocates that we have locally, and through our national network, their role is to, you know, find that pathway to what they're trying to access. And we know that certain times for the majority of time, veterans are seeking for more resources. So like you said, you know, having that kind of easy button to help you navigate where you need to go, is part of it. And it's, it's a walking with you, not for you. So we really emphasize solution focused, and let's teach the veteran how to fish and a lot of times, then they'll be able to help navigate others as well, you know, they're there, the veteran population is very much about helping their brothers and sisters arms. So creating that way for them, and an individual level. And we do it on the community level. So like I talked about, with veterans, one stop, and the bus route, like say, you know, a majority of the population is living in this community, and they can't get to the VA, and that's where the veterans are, this should be an easy thing for us to think about changing. And then the will so that's the second part of the hope, will in a way. So you know, it might be that you're a veteran doesn't want to ask for help. A veteran doesn't know that they're struggling with something abundant veteran doesn't know what even is available to them, whether it's the GI Bill, or VA health care. You know, with the pack that coming out, we we learned that that extends to more people for VA health care, and there's a lot of misconceptions of VA health care. And I've heard multiple times that Oh, I don't want to take advantage of my benefits, because that would take it away from somebody else. And that's just a misconception. So just kind of really being that, that listening ear to understand them. And then to say, these are all the things that you can take advantage of and the community is a part of of that. That model. It's there's so many facets to it. That's kind of the quick and easy way to say is community integration is a veteran focused community led initiative to proactively gate engage veterans in the community and ensure access to resources in collaboration with existing programs. So we are not direct service providers. We work with what exists existing, and we help just kind of bridge that all together and bring the veteran to it and and it improves their quality of life we've seen and that's our Upstream approach to ensure that veterans don't fall through the cracks. Don't lose that hope, you know, if you're turned down from a VA appointment, if you're told your claim isn't gonna get accepted, like how does that make you feel? It's not a good feeling. So any veteran that we can meet and to kind of work through that with them. Because a win for us.

Keith McKeever 19:17

Once again, like kind of alluded to earlier, I love that you guys are like the connector of the roadmap, you know, is just talking from it. And I'm like, there's so many resources, there's so much information, it kind of makes me like think of a kid trying to clean their room and I don't know where to start. Or like, you put somebody on the edge of the forest and say, okay, all these trees are veteran resources. Each one of them does a little something different. I want you to find one. You know, you're looking for one tree in this forest. Go find it. Yeah, we don't really know what tree it is or what it looks like or how big it is. But where it's at in the forest. You have no trails to go off of. Where do you start? Just it's too much to navigate. So yeah, So that's one thing I love about it kind of provide that path and the waypoints and some science here, it's over there. It's over there.

Kaitlin Cashwell 20:07

Cool. And it's kind of like in the military as well, you know, I was trying to help my sister in law with navigating some things with her move, and some stuff got jumbled around me, it's not the side, the military community that kind of just say, Well, it depends if it's Tuesday or Thursday. So just kind of being that, that Welcome Wagon to be like, well, I know exactly where you need to go on Tuesday versus Thursday, and you need to talk to this general or this Lieutenant. It's, yeah, it's not unique to kind of what is known in the military, it's just, it's not easy. It's not easy to navigate these things, even as a civilian, you know, I have a hard time navigating healthcare, you know, if you were going to see a specialist, you don't even know what's wrong with you. And then they're like, Well, you can't really go to this person until you go back to your primary care physician. And it's, it's just, it's just the reality of community systems.

Keith McKeever 21:06

Well, then you complicate things for people who have physical injuries, or somebody who has an invisible wound, you know, PTSD, or traumatic brain injury, confusion might come about even faster, quicker, you know, and then, then you're looking at it like, I don't know where to go, like, the path may be clear, you may be being told exactly what you need to do to get what, but that it's just an extra layer of complication on top of things. And let's just face it, you know, the VA system is just complicated. It's a big, it's government, this is not going to change, you know, you just got to figure out how to navigate and find the right connection pieces. But I love that you talk about hope. Because that's, I don't think I've ever really heard anybody mentioned hope. When we talk about suicide. And I've got your website, scroll across the bottom, I'll put in the show notes to America, where your partnership, but I just want to throw another one up here, since we're kind of diving into a deeper topic. If somebody's struggling, remember, the Suicide Lifeline, Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 980, press one. Just want to have that scroll in there to somebody's watching or listening. But every every everywhere, we're talking about suicide, we talk about suicide, we don't talk about the hope and why people live, why people make that decision to take that gun out of their mouth, drop the needle, stop doing whatever negative bad behavior they're doing themselves. So I'm curious if you guys found any common trends or things that are giving people hope, that are pushing people past that point?

Kaitlin Cashwell 22:51

Yeah, um, so with the holistic wheel, I always look about, you know, if you're connected to a job that you kind of consider a career versus just nine, or like, an hourly job. You know, we've seen that that hope is improved through the connecting to these holistic things, healthcare, transportation is a really big one, if somebody doesn't have the ability to navigate throughout the community, I mean, you can't connect to friends across town, you can't go to VA health care appointments, you just are kind of stuck if you don't have transportation. So that's one thing that is a huge proponent of ours. We have a information system that like flags, certain circumstances as read, so like, pay a special attention to this, work closely with it, don't let it be a kind of push off. Transportation is one of them. We same with like health care. So if they're not enrolled in health care, that's just a huge barrier, you know, health care costs are just continuously increasing.

Keith McKeever 24:03

Want to focus on that for a second? And I'm gonna ask for percentage. I know you probably don't have that exactly off top your head, but know roughly what percentage of veterans do you think are struggling with health care issues and are not in the VA system? For whatever reason, I

Kaitlin Cashwell 24:20

gotta go back and remember, I'm sorry, the off this one, um,

Keith McKeever 24:24

but a rough number. You know, we're just kind of curious. Well,

Kaitlin Cashwell 24:28

not everybody is eligible for VA healthcare. So and then we get sometimes issues with like dental you know, that's, that's something that is so hard for us to find through the network resources related to that, but we have I think about 40% of the people that we serve are connected to VA health care. So that would be the ones that that we serve. But now it's been extended. So there's there's work to be done to educate people on that. and to get them the paperwork and, and all of that?

Keith McKeever 25:04

Well, I think most veterans understand that, you know, there's guidelines or requirements, you know, to be a VA care, but I think it probably be shocking to most civilians to hear that. Not every veteran is eligible to go to the VA for health care. Which, Oh, yeah. Personally, to me, it's fine. I mean, I'll raise my hand industry. Everybody who served should be able to go get health care. Very basic dental is another one. I'm still dumbfounded. Why dental isn't included. It's so important. No dental expert, but I know that your dental health is important to your gut health and all kinds of other things. I don't know. It would be like a proactive way to stave off other issues, I would think I'm no doctor.

Kaitlin Cashwell 25:57

Preventative Yes.

Keith McKeever 26:00

Measures save money down the line. Just like homelessness, if you can get people in homes and get them jobs and earning money, then they're not on the streets, causing, you know, strings on nonprofits or strains on the government or whatever.

Kaitlin Cashwell 26:16

Mental health, mental health,

Keith McKeever 26:17

yeah, I mean, give people access to stuff and you can stave off some of those other bigger expenses down the road. But anyway, that's just man, maybe we'll have some, some Senator or Representative listen to this and be like, Oh, that's a good idea, we can run with this.

Kaitlin Cashwell 26:36

Yeah, and I mean, that's the biggest part too, is just them knowing about it, before it becomes an issue. So take advantage of your VA health care, even if you don't need it right now, just get enrolled, you can still go see your favorite doctor. But if you ever do need it, that's kind of where we stand on that. And same with like enrolling any benefits, because that's the gateway to all things that you need in the VA. So like, Let's get your VA card, let's get the documentation, make sure you have your login so that you can be empowered, if you or your family have ever ever needs to access it. And there's a lot of work that we do with family members and caregivers, we never exclude them, we see them as like warriors altogether. But a lot of the times you're working with family members and caregivers, to just kind of talk about maybe any changes with veterans, or just to kind of nudge them and say, Hey, like, they'll reach out to us and say, Hey, we need we need someone to enroll with VA health care. And so we'll help walk them through the process. So they can kind of be an advocate, honestly Train the Trainer. Just to make sure that the veteran I mean, not every veteran wants to ask for help. It's I don't like to ask for help myself. So we we tried to be very available and accessible, depending what what each veteran needs and like a one size fits one approach. So we say

Keith McKeever 28:14

yes, kind of odd that we have this mental block when it comes to asking for help. A lot of it comes from our time and service, you know, kind of be proud, strong gun, you know, be this rock, this foundation can't show this weakness, right? You have to have this warrior mindset, mentality, whatever. But yet, at the same time, we all thrive in the military. We're a team. We're only as good as the weakest link. So you rely on your buddies to your left and your right. It's what you do. That's it. That's how the team's efficiently run. So it was kind of mind boggling that how you rely on everybody next to you left and right for all of these things to be effective in service. You don't rely on the resources that are available yet you're out. And I'm guilty of it. I never saw any counselor for 13 years after my first deployment. You know, it was nine years after getting out of the military before I saw a counselor and it took a battle buddy of mine to kind of slap me through the telephone and told me I was stupid for not seeking a counselor and talking to issues and dealing with with things. I don't care what you're dealing with. I think every veteran should go to VA mental health. Everybody should have a counselor and see them at least a couple of times a year. talk through things talk through things in life. You're out for 10 years other things in life are gonna happen and pop up and cause stress to you to talk about them doesn't have to be a bunch of military service.

Kaitlin Cashwell 29:45

Yeah, and peer support. Peer support is another thing that we push very much that's for Warriors is the one national resource that's really good. But no, you're right and we love that I love the chain analogy. because we had that in our original playbook is veterans are all this long chain in the community and one's weak or broken and the whole chain is gone. So it's like why we support all veterans is because then yes, the veterans can help other veterans and just make that that one in this a kudos to your buddy for, for helping kind of lift you up with him to recognize the deal? Well, I'm

Keith McKeever 30:26

not surprised you did it. Because you know, I don't know, if you've ever listened to this, you'll know exactly what it was. But it's not the first time in life that he's he's helped me course correct. And probably saved my life in one way or another. So you know, and that's, that's what it's all about. You know, you got to have those conversations. And those connections, it wouldn't happen if I didn't have connections with him through Facebook. And we, we don't talk very frequently, but we do talk every now and then. And so it's, it's important. So I mean, that's one of the things I love about what you're doing, because you've hit on a couple of different things. What I've noticed starting to, you know, what led to starting this podcast, what I've noticed since then just reinforces it is that there's really like five pillars to things that cause people veterans to go into homelessness, substance abuse, and ultimately suicide. And to me, one of them is financial legal issues, when I'm this close personal, family relationships. What is physical mental health, the other one is lack of connection to the community. And I don't think it has to be necessarily the veteran community, just a connection to the community, in some way, shape, or form, do something to volunteer being able to get out and about, you know, go down your favorite diner and have breakfast and know that the waitress in there you see every day or, you know, the bank teller that you run into every week, whatever, just being in the community. And then the last one is, like purpose, purpose for employment. And so those the community in the employment and things you had on them, like, I think it's so beautiful, somebody with a job or a purpose, something that they're happy that they wake up in the morning, and you're excited to go to work. Because if you're not excited to go to work, you probably shouldn't be working in that job. Yeah, you know, don't put that extra stress on you, you don't need it. My old man told me that once he worked in a coal mine for 25 years, hated every minute of it. And he, you know, I think he was stressed when the coal mines shut down. But he had told me many times he goes, Don't ever do a job that you hate. If you if you hate, if you get up in the morning, and you hate it, and you're pissed off walking out that door, don't do it. So I think there's something really big to those two things that you mentioned. And I'm really glad that there's kind of a focus what you guys are doing in the community here. Because I think they're two of the big five pillars. And I think the more of those that are lacking for somebody, the more likely they're going to end up in one of those two situations. And then you have a real hard time being out.

Kaitlin Cashwell 33:01

Yeah, it's got to be the whole person.

Keith McKeever 33:05

Well, just as with any change, right, you have to be able to, you have to be able to see it in yourself, see where you're at, and reflect and be like, I don't want to be here. I want to I want to fix this. So somebody's at that point, they're not going to fix themselves. Family control, they want friends control they want but until that person has made up their mind, and they decided it's not gonna happen.

Kaitlin Cashwell 33:26

It's something that's so important to you about just being known, like you're saying in your community, like somebody knowing if you don't show up, like somebody knowing if if you don't pull your trash back, you know, I have a neighbor. That's, that's one of those names. He's actually a military, Vietnam veteran, Command Sergeant Major. And he's like, yeah, just just one of those neighbors. Like, why didn't you put your trash back? You know what, thank you for just recognizing that I'm here. And it's important. I've been in the same community all my life. I think you've mentioned you have to, but it's just yeah, it's just having somebody know your name when you go out just having a purpose. Whether it's just a smile in the community, I think is so relevant.

Keith McKeever 34:12

Yeah, to not just be invisible or being stuck in your house and whatnot. So. So is there any other factor scrolling again, for free website, but is there any other resources or other things that you guys got going on? Or projects or I think I have here my notes, Mission roll call some other things?

Kaitlin Cashwell 34:34

Yeah, Mission Roll Call is a program of Americans for your partnership. They are making the veterans voices heard. So there is over 1.5 million people that they're communicating with and upset accepting polls from so just really kind of understanding where your priorities lie. I know one of them was suicide prevention. So that came from the veteran's and then family members and caregivers to say that that was a priority. And we just take it to community leaders and national leaders and say, This is what your people are saying. It's almost like a virtual town hall to just share that data and say, What do you want to do with it, and then telling stories of veterans VSOs community leaders, just hearing from them about where they're making their priorities, and just kind of letting people know about, about what they're working on?

Keith McKeever 35:34

Another great day data point,

Kaitlin Cashwell 35:35

right? Exactly. Yeah. We do love data.

Keith McKeever 35:41

Can't go wrong with it. So awesome. Anything else that you guys have going on? That we haven't talked about yet?

Kaitlin Cashwell 35:49

Um, I mean, so you said you were a nerd, I'm doing a lot of evaluation, we do emphasize that as well, just continuously refining are our projects. And I was able to do some things with the CDC to just refine the community integration approach. And so I'm looking at the Navajo nation right now, and seeing how our model is improving collaboration and connectedness. So we always kind of emphasize a one size fits one veteran approach. And then also one size fits one community approach. So that's allowing us to kind of work with, with the community, the Navajo Nation leaders, the veterans there to work with, with what's existing. And then we're going to take that evaluation project to our other branches across the state of Alaska is one of our branches. Indianapolis, Indiana is another branch, the panhandle of Florida, and the Permian Basin in Texas. So taking that same model, and evaluation plan to understand how we are improving those communities as well. So we have a lot of diverse communities. We have tribal, through Alaska and the Navajo Nation. And then we have big city, somewhat big city, in Indianapolis, and then some rural, rural and medium size with the Panhandle in the Permian, Texas. But overall, all the communities are very positive towards the military community. So that is always making the job a little bit easier, not having to start from ground zero on that. So and then we did an evaluation on big cities, we're doing assessments on some big cities, and just how they're, they're ranking in their support for the veteran population, we have like a tool that we created, and we've been using for the past nine years. So just one thing that we're finding is that big cities have lots of resources. But it's not the best collaboration, because you don't have to collaborate, if you have a lot of resources. And then small cities love collaboration, because there's no resources, they're always working together to try to make things work.

Keith McKeever 38:08

It's kind of born out of necessity. I mean, if you're gonna make it work, then. Yeah, that makes sense.

Kaitlin Cashwell 38:16

So the big cities have to competition because they're competing for funds,

Keith McKeever 38:21

hypothetically, medium sized cities, couple 100,000 People would probably have a decent amount of collaboration and a decent amount of resources, and probably be a fairly decent place for for a veteran to think about relocating.

Kaitlin Cashwell 38:37

Yeah, that I mean, in the big cities are still good. It's just different. But yeah, I mean, our our model was original affiliates were in kind of the medium sized, so Greenville, South Carolina, I don't know how I'm familiar with them, but they're doing great things upstate, where your solution, but they have that, yeah, the city where there's resources, and then the rural areas where outreach is so important. So yes, the community integration model was originally intended for those medium sized communities because of that, but then we love a challenge. So then we take on some rural communities to figure out how we can do better there. And then we have the model in Atlanta, Georgia, which is a big city. So just navigating that knowing that collaboration is something that you have to work a little bit harder to because of the competition. It's not something that they're they're not tackling but it is just something to be aware of.

Keith McKeever 39:35

Yeah, I asked because I can I kind of live in one of those metropolitan areas. It's kind of a couple 100,000 people and I know some of those really small communities you're gonna probably have to drive to another another community for something but I think about locally here like I'm in Peoria, Illinois area, got a VA clinic 2530 minutes from my house. The the hospital is couple hours away, but you know, it is what it is. You know, We got a great nonprofit that I've highlighted on here, Freedom paws, service dogs, you know, the Honor Flight network that I'm involved with, there's fuller life foundation for mental health resources that I've highlighted a couple of other nonprofits in town that we, you know, picked up veterans houses and helped we get rid of ordinance issues and stuff like that, in the city. So like, there's a lot of cool things, a lot of great resources and people doing amazing things in my little community. That's like, not a small role. But it's not Indianapolis, either. It's not, it's not Chicago, we're, you know, the population is five times six times as many whatever. So it's kind of kind of neat to be able to see that. There's enough support here to keep those organizations going and doing good things. And we've got enough of a name that I think most veterans in the area kind of know who they are, or that there's an organization out there that does it. Yeah, there's a little bit of a signpost there's some help over here, right?

Kaitlin Cashwell 40:58

Yeah, my name is I'm sure all those nonprofits either are run by a veteran, or there's veterans on the board member on the board. So it's, it's just cool to see all the veterans that wants to do better to help their brothers and sisters in arms and medium sized communities have enough funds to, to kind of raise money for those programs. So to see what's going on in Syria?

Keith McKeever 41:22

Well, you know, I haven't said this in a long time, but I've seen a few times before. And I know you didn't serve, but it's my my thoughts anyway that civilians want to help veterans may not necessarily always know how is best. I mean, you've been doing this for years. So you got it, you got family members. Some people don't know anybody who's, you know, don't know anything about this. But we as veterans should do a much better job of having each other's backs. We have to, we have to rely on each other, we light we relied on each other when you're in uniform, and all of a sudden, it just disappears when we're out. And we have to do a better job. Nobody cares about us more than we're

Kaitlin Cashwell 42:07

you know, that's a good call to action, because our survey shows that. Yeah, there's like, I think it was 40% this year of veterans that aren't doing things in their community. I mean, maybe they're into misinterpreting community or not misinterpreting, but interpreting in different ways, and then we would, and maybe they do things with their family. But they said they don't do anything in their community. And so it's like, why, why are you not? Why are you not involved?

Keith McKeever 42:37

You know, it doesn't take much. You can, you can volunteer and other than the cost of the of the gas or the maybe the bus ticket to get to the volunteer location, you can volunteer for virtually nothing. It just cost your time

Kaitlin Cashwell 42:53

as rental options to

Keith McKeever 42:55

absolutely. You know, I'm involved in the Honor Flight network, and we have we have all ladies that sit around and crush crochet little flags. There's there's a million different ways you can support your community in one way or another.

Kaitlin Cashwell 43:09

Yeah, there's operation gratitude writing letters. BTS sponsorship, being a sponsor for a veteran moving into your community there it's it's a it's a great way to connect is just reach out to a nonprofit and just say, What can I do? It doesn't even have to be veteran focus. Just what can I do?

Keith McKeever 43:27

Oh, boy, yeah, blew me, he'll take it, you know, that volunteer will find something for you. I saw a long time ago, you know, you come up with any kind of idea when you got a nonprofit. What's it gonna cost and who's gonna run it, that's the two keys. You got somebody that can spearhead it and lead it, and you got the funds or the ability to get the resources to do it. Then you got an idea you got to play. So But anyway, I really appreciate your time to come on here and talk with me and share with military veteran community, all my listeners about everything that you guys got going on. I really hope anybody listening or watching. If there's something maybe you think deep, there's something in your head a resource that you you thought about or wanted to connect with or just don't know where to go? Well, now you got the got the starting point in the map right here. So let's go to American warrior partnership dot Oregon, and start your journey. Of course you can, you'll be able to reach Kaitlyn on my website, too. I'll have your your picture up there and your LinkedIn profile so people can reach out to you and connect with you. So I highly encourage anybody watching or listening if there's a resource you're looking for. Go out there and try and find it.

Kaitlin Cashwell 44:37

Yes, thank you, Keith. And can you do the crisis line again, one more time just so if you are in crisis, please reach out to the crisis line. We work upstream to help connect you before you're in that situation. But the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is the best spot for that.

Keith McKeever 44:54

Absolutely. You're even have an inkling of a thought. Call the number get to help you I used to say this for for when I play my ending video here in a second but I mean I, I really mean it. We really we want you here tomorrow. Like as blunt as it can be. Please be here tomorrow. You You do have friends and family and people that care about you got to be here tomorrow.

Kaitlin Cashwell 45:22

Your community needs you. Your family needs you your battle buddies need you.

Keith McKeever 45:27

Absolutely. So anyway, Caitlin, once again, I appreciate you coming on for being on the show.

Kaitlin Cashwell 45:31

All right. Thank you, Keith. Thank you for having me.

Keith McKeever 45:35

No problem. All right, there you go, folks. Once again, if you're struggling, like I just said, Please call the number we want to hear tomorrow. And my website is battle buddy podcast dot debt as a reminder, like I say after episode, if there's not a resource on there that you think should be, please reach out, let me know. I would love to be able to add it on there in some way, shape, or form. You know, everything on this podcast and the website is about helping connect other veterans much like our guests today and America's word partnership.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai