This is a reminder that VTAC, Veterans Therapeutic Arts Center will be having an open house and silent auction next Saturday. VTAC was started earlier this year by a great group of veterans to provide a center for therapy to all those who have served in the U.S. military and their families through instruction and participation in the arts, crafts, mechanics and similar activities and endeavors I had the opportunity to meet with them as a representative of the Marshall County Community Foundation grants committee. After meeting them and hearing about the good work they are doing, I was pleased to be able to champion their cause and help them secure a grant.
If you’re interested in reading about my meeting with them, you can find it on the Easterday Construction Co., Inc. blog here.
If you’re looking for something to do on October 20th, go out to MoonTree Studios and support these guys. They’re a wonderful group and they have found a fantastic way to help our community.
This one came in an email, so I don’t know who to credit.
For some reason my mom wasn’t all that amused!
I had the opportunity last Tuesday night to visit some of the founding members of VTAC, Veterans Therapeutic Art Center. I sat down with Larry, Terry, Richie, and Dan at the MoonTree Studios facility (MoonTree Community Studios is a Ministry of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ) where they have been allowed to use the woodworking shop as a start up location. The organization is going to cover a seven county area serving veterans and their families. Their information shows that there are over 50,000 veterans in this area and they are conservatively estimating a clientele of around 150,000 when they include families. These four men are all veterans and they shared with me some of the struggles in coming back and reintegrating into society. They explained that many veterans tend to pull into a shell, never leaving home, and often end up resorting to the bottle to cope. The organization is very young and just recently received their 501(c)3 designation. Despite this they are already working in multiple venues beyond the woodworking, providing culinary arts, an art studio, music studio, multimedia computer lab, photography studio and metal sculpturing. Currently experts in these fields are volunteering their time to provide these services. They have hopes of expanding into auto mechanics and other hands-on fields as well.
They are hoping to set up facilities throughout their territory with various opportunities to draw out the veterans. Their feeling is that by including families, family involvement will encourage the veterans themselves to participate. They know that veterans are very independent and often introspective. In many cases they have skills that are valuable but they have issues that prevent them from integrating into a regular workplace. One of their other plans is to form a barter system where veterans can share their skills on a peer to peer basis. For example they discussed the possibility of being able to have a veteran electrician do work at a home in exchange for something like accounting services if the recipient has those types of skills. The possibilities are somewhat unlimited with that type of program so it could be a huge resource. This is also another way to get the veterans involved in a sub-community, if not the greater community at this point, and should help them integrate back into society. As the organization is young they do not know exactly what they will morph into but their long range plan is to expand the group into additional 7 to 8 county hubs throughout the region and eventually nationally.
They discussed with me the problems with the current veteran programs that are out there. These programs often are available, but they are not run by veterans, so there is no connection of shared experience. They surprised me when they told me that in these programs, even including the VA (U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs ), the personnel are rarely veterans. Often the programs are known, but the details on how to access them are vague. Not only will VTAC be providing their in-house services, but they also hope to be a clearing house where a veteran can come and find out about other services. VTAC will try and connect them to someone who has been through the paperwork and other requirements to apply for help.
They showed amazing enthusiasm and energy for getting this project off the ground. It truly looks like they have found a need that can be answered and they have found a unique way to address it. It will be interesting to follow their progress. I want to wish them every success!
They are having a silent auction and open house event October 20th from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM at MoonTree Studios. They are hoping that this will be a way to bring veterans together and inform the community about their programs. The auction will then be a fundraiser for the program and will include some of the furniture pieces that they have refurbished in their woodworking shop. Mark your calendars to be there!
Presenting Easterday Construction Co., Inc.’s 2012 Little League Team.
Whether you employ sewing machine operators or software developers, teachers or technicians, CNC operators or CNAs, finding and developing talent is mission critical. It’s also mission critical for the future growth of our region, and that is why your participation in this study is needed.
Marshall County Economic Development Corporation, the Corporate Partnership for Economic Growth (CPEG), and other regional economic development and education stakeholders are partnering in an effort to better understand the workforce needs of local business and industry.
This collaborative Regional Workforce Initiative has three goals:
You can be a part of this initiative by completing the workforce survey located here.
The goal of the survey is to quantify the number of open positions, assess skills gaps, and identify barriers to company growth related to workforce issues.
The survey will take approximately 15 minutes, and should be completed by business owners, managers, human resource managers or someone with in-depth knowledge of your company’s current and future hiring needs. The survey requests information about current full-time openings and anticipated openings over the next 6 months, including salary, skills, and education requirements. You cannot save your responses and return later.
All information will be kept confidential.
The survey will be open until Friday, July 27th. Results will be compiled to inform work sessions focused on identifying solutions to address the barriers to filling existing positions. Only companies in Marshall, Kosciusko, Elkhart, St. Joseph and Fulton Counties that complete the survey are eligible to participate in these work sessions.
Additional details about the Regional Workforce Initiative, including a list of the regional partners supporting this effort, can be found at www.cpeg.org.
Thank you for your time in completing the survey, and for helping to be a part of the solution!