Returning military personnel should have guarantees from the American people that they and their families will be protected from neglect when they return from combat. How do we accomplish this? We do what many of our soldiers did to fight for our freedoms – boots on the ground, one strategy after another. Rather, our community members should have shoes on the ground.

Communities have a responsibility to ensure that their sentiments toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are divided from their sentiment for the soldiers who are on the front line. There is a need for a direct focus on facilitating the course for the returning soldiers that leads to solace, hope and a retrieval of neighborhood familiarity.

Our communities should be empowered to protect and assist their reinvesting warriors for a more organized and less complicated return to working and thriving. In the U.S., there is a deficit of a national strategy to accomplish this. Our communities must take responsibility for providing for the reinvestment of warriors and neighbors as they work through their post war lives together and to incorporate the most sensitive, efficient, functional and protective mechanisms to meet the needs of our veterans and their families.

All our communities should have a bank of tools they can use to ensure the safe and effective integration of our military men and women into the communities. The “tools” that exist in each community toolkit may be different. For instance, one community may have the resources to design and execute an annual conference bringing all veterans together to discuss their needs to safely and effectively re-integrate to their communities.

Another community may have the resources to offer a Chain of Support. Within each “chain” is one volunteer from the community who has volunteered to provide what they know best. For instance, a hairdresser may offer one free haircut per week to selected veterans. A pet lover may offer his/her services to walk a pet, for free, for one veteran each weekend.

There is an abundance of creative ideas to achieve healthy and well-integrated communities who embrace the return of military men and women who have risked their mental, emotional and physical well being to protect the freedoms that allow our communities to thrive. Each community can and should step up.

By: Ethan Richard

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