Vets on a Mission
Aug. 09, 2018
Anthony Fedele, at present 43, served in the military for six years before he returned abode to Philadelphia in 1999 a changed human being.
Memories from an blow he won't even talk about triggered panic attacks. He viewed everyone equally either friend or enemy––generally enemies––and all just restricted himself from talking with or beingness around other veterans. He no longer found jokes funny and could non understand things that people were trying to explain to him. He'd always been smart, and a voracious reader, but he lost the power to extract context from what he was reading. Something was clearly wrong.
He was diagnosed with PTSD, and so traumatic encephalon injury, and started taking nearly 30 pills a twenty-four hour period. One morning, after a particular night of turmoil, Fedele visited the Veteran Diplomacy hospital, left on his motorcycle after and quickly found himself reaching speeds of 90 miles an hour on I-76. He prayed for the strength to pull his bike into the wall to his left. Only he couldn't.
"I saw reality for what it was that day," says Fedele. "I knew, in that exact moment, that I had to do something differently."
"The idea that yous are not working just to promote yourself, the idea that it is mission oriented, knowing that the work that I am doing and all this fourth dimension that I am putting in, makes an actual touch—now that's something I tin take home with me," says Fedele.
What Fedele did was what he had done all those many years agone: Join up. This time, it was with The Mission Continues, a national nonprofit that empowers veterans adjusting to civilian life through customs affect, leading service projects, alongside community members and volunteers, to solve the problems that accept gripped disenfranchised communities for as well long.
Fedele, an MBA educatee at Drexel University, is now the Philadelphia Platoon Leader of The Mission Continues, which has about 40,000 members in over twoscore communities across the country, tackling what its executive director Mohan Sivaloganthan calls "a unique juxtaposition of challenges."
"You've got disenfranchised communities suffering from broken education systems, healthcare systems, just so many unlike ways that inequalities are holding children down and holding families down," says Sivaloganthan. " And so, on another side, you lot've got veterans who have this immense base of capability that'southward been developed through their time in the armed forces: A sense of purpose, a sense of wanting to give back, project management skills, discipline, teamwork, comradery––these are skills that we demand in these communities we are talking about."
The Mission Continues opened its Philly chapter in 2014, and at present has about 275 local veterans every bit well as other volunteers. Fedele, himself a volunteer, brings those troops together for several events a year, ordinarily in schools. Most notable is the work they've done over the last two years in Kensington's Thomas Alva Edison Loftier School—coincidentally the high school that lost more students to the Vietnam State of war than any other in America.
"Information technology is time," Fedele says, "to change the narrative of what it means to be a veteran."
In the autumn of 2016, Fedele visited the school and asked Main Awilda Ortiz, "What is your wish list?" At commencement, he says, she was quite reserved, having learned not to rely on the promises of non-profits dropping in for a day or a week to practice their customs service and move on. But well-nigh 2 years later, that listing is near complete, three years ahead of its expected schedule.
The Mission Continues congenital a new softball field with a scoreboard, where there was once only grass and painted lines. They re-painted silver goal posts that previously could not be seen in direct sunlight. They painted the 900-human foot fence and the window confined that, while unpainted, made the school look too much like a prison. They built a vegetable garden and an outdoor classroom, among a myriad of other tasks. And in September, as a final project at the high school, Fedele has organized a grouping of 400 to 500 volunteers to renovate the auditorium and build basketball courts.
"I think the nonprofit globe is just right for veterans," says Fedele. "The thought that you are not working just to promote yourself, the thought that it is mission oriented, knowing that the work that I am doing and all this time that I am putting in, makes an actual impact. I become to run into that the schools are really using the planters that we build, or the picture of the principal with a handful of vegetables in her hand––grown from what we congenital. Now that's something I tin can have domicile with me."
The Mission Continues was founded in St. Louis in 2007, at start for post-9/11 veterans. (Its founder, sometime Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, was later defendant of using the group'due south donor list to raise money for his gubernatorial entrada—which the electric current leadership denies—likewise as of several illegal acts, including sexual set on and blackmail.) From three vets that first year, the group grew steadily over the concluding decade, and now works with more 900 community and civic groups on volunteer activities—including in recovery efforts, like those after final year'due south Hurricane Harvey.
A Veterans Administration report estimated that in 2022 the work of The Mission Continues amounted to $four.seven million in value to communities around the land. A couple of studies besides have found that the rate of depression amongst volunteers went downwardly past half , and that vets involved showed vast improvements in their physical, mental and social health.
A Veterans Administration report estimated that in 2022 the work of The Mission Continues amounted to $4.7 one thousand thousand in value to communities around the state. A couple of studies also have plant that the rate of low amidst volunteers went down past half, and that vets involved showed vast improvements in their physical, mental and social health.
Fedele's struggle to find his place amidst the noncombatant globe is not unique. Co-ordinate to Leah Blain, manager of the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, as much every bit 40 percent of veterans experiencing some sort of behavioral health concerns, like depression, anxiety or PTSD, are not seeking treatment.
"The last thing y'all desire to exercise is choice upward that 500 pound phone and ask for help," says Fedele. "Only y'all tin can't be agape to ask for help. That's the virtually important thing. Anybody knows they should, just nobody does."
For Fedele, the assistance he plant from The Mission Continues came unexpectedly. He had already been practicing with a zen Buddhist monk, and was beginning to "undo a lot of the conditioning" he had gone through. But there was still something missing––that comradery, that sense of purpose, that mission.
He had struck up a conversation with the blood brother of his neighbor, a veteran who was visiting Philadelphia, and was a volunteer with The Mission Continues. Later on listening to the experiences he shared, Fedele was sold, and signed upwards that day. His offset experience with the group was in Detroit in June of 2022 at a "Mass Deployment," and annual event where some 100 veterans and volunteers from across the country get together in one city for several days of service work.
"Think well-nigh the power to identify an issue happening somewhere; develop a strategy; rally people together to bargain with it; being wheels upwardly and on the ground within 18 hours," says Sivaloganthan. "At present ask yourself: who does that better than the military machine, than veterans?"
For Fedele, it was the first time in nearly 10 years that he had allowed himself to be among other veterans, and he didn't know what to expect. Fedele, alongside more than 70 veterans and volunteers, tackled a number of projects beyond the metropolis, from construction and landscape, to painting and public art. And despite the scorching summer temperatures and exhausting manual labor, Fedele had never felt better and more at home. Hither was a mission, a purpose; and here, surrounding him, were people who understood him.
Fedele says that a friend, also a veteran, said it best: "Us veterans," she once told him, "we need to be around each other to remind us what we are capable of."
"That is exactly 100 percentage true," Fedele adds. "I forgot. I forgot what I was capable of."
Now Fedele brings that same motivation to Philadelphia, as he did final month, when he led well-nigh 30 vets and their families in a Sabbatum morning painting session at Robert Due east. Lamberton school in Upper Darby. As with all their events, the day started with a rousing shout that resonated through the schoolhouse: Charlie Mike!
The phrase is a military command that means to get the job done, terminate a task in pursuit of a larger mission, something frequently said in the heat of the moment to remind military men and women of who they are, and why they are wherever they may be. Information technology is a plumbing equipment motto for The Mission Continues, and for what Fedele hopes is the ultimate outcome for the veterans: Beingness a guiding calorie-free for a country that needs information technology.
"It is fourth dimension," Fedele says, "to change the narrative of what information technology ways to be a veteran."
Photograph: The Mission Continues 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/vets-on-a-mission/
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