Building Veterans
Our Story:
Our Mission
To reach out to veterans and others especially those dealing with PTSD, Hidden Brain Injury (HBI), and other post combat issues. These are issues that often result in drug, alcohol or other addictions requiring long term recovery programs. Together we work to repurpose and refocus our lives, building up each other as we help to rebuild small towns and ci
ties. Using solid business practices and an innovative total immersion peer counseling program, we have our first base in Brunswick, MD. Our program has been developed and tested over the past ten years in Branson, MO, where the primary problem was methamphetamine addiction. Highlights
We are a community of peers --- primarily veterans who can benefit from a program with aggressive goals and innovative ideas. Peer to peer relationships are proving to be the best way to deal with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), post trauma depression, and the addictions that plague veterans when they try to mask their pain with drugs and alcohol. We are a community of peer houses, a program of recovery from the afflictions and dependencies caused by the trauma of war. We provide employment training and job placement. We partner with the Veterans Administration, and State and County social service agencies, along with our own trained counselors, to provide specialized mental and physical health services. We provide hope where there is none. We are Building Veterans. We use a military model of a regimented life partnered with an excellent training program. The core principal is that everyone has a purpose in obtaining the common objective. Everyone is expected to work on their educational goals, at jobs within the program, or at jobs within the wider community. The key to success of the military “Battle Buddy” program is the idea ---- a buddy is expected to assist his/her buddy in and out of combat----we bring this life saving concept back to the home front. What Makes Us Unique
We are in the business of helping people learn how they can best help themselves. We are unique in what we do because of the comprehensive nature of our program. Years of study by the White House Faith Based Initiative have demonstrated that for some social services, private faith-based organizations are better equipped than government run programs. Because we are a faith-based, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), we can provide the best services available from both religious based organizations, mental health care organizations and governmental agencies. We are unique in the ministry world because we run as a business. We have a keen eye focused on making each aspect of our work operate as a separate profit center. We are unique in the business world because, as a faith-based organization, we have the ability to provide an extensive amount of support services at no cost to our members. These services are provided through the donations of time and money from our partnerships with religious organizations. We are unique in the non-profit world because we do not need to depend on single source funding. We are able to raise funds in a number of ways:
• State and Federal Government Grants
• Private Grants from Trusts and Foundations, (we currently have a list of over 400 such private groups that have a self-declared desire to help veterans)
• Partnerships with other non-profit and for-profit entities
• Sales of our own crafts from our wood shops and logo-based apparel
• Housing which is designed to be self-supporting and to assist in providing salaries for key staff
• A strong partnership with the houses of worship in our broader community. (These partnerships will not only provide us with the funds to administer our programs, but also with volunteers to further cut our costs)
For all the above reasons, we can offer to individual donors the unique opportunity of knowing that 100% of their donations will go directly into providing services with no administrative costs. We are unique as an innovative organization. While working hard to create an atmosphere of self-help and innovative thinking, we maintain a team with the sole responsibility of documenting our successes and failures. This team makes replication of the successes easier and helps minimize failures in future endeavors. WoodCrafters®, a national retail chain of high end wood working tools, has challenged us to demonstrate our model. They have committed to help us grow. If in a year’s time they see positive life changes being made, they will help underwrite our bases in as many as 74 different locations within range of their retail outlets. We are unique in the world of social services and veterans services because of our multi-pronged program approach. We are:
• A housing program
• A peer to peer recovery program
• An employment training and placement program
• A personalized counseling program
