Battle Buds Initiative

ABOUT THE BATTLE BUDS INITIATIVE:

Military service can instill Service Members with character, positive values, and skills that can help them become effective contributors to civilian communities and businesses after they transition from the military to the civilian sector. These Veterans bring distinctive capabilities and skills developed through real-world, high pressure experiences that give them a high level of potential to thrive in the civilian sector. The Battle Buds Initiative strives to maximize this potential and bring it to fruition, so that transitioned Veterans can become the next community and business leaders.

Based in NYC with the goal of expanding to three additional cities by the end of the year, the initiative is a supervised mentorship and peer-to-peer program that replicates services already provided in a similar system in the military (e.g., Total Transition Program) that assist every service member to successfully navigate a Permanent Change of Station. In this existing program, the sponsor ensures that a service member fully transfers from one duty station to another within such critical domains as- employment/duty, housing, family, social/community and physical activities, and medical care. The sponsor doesn’t provide services within each of the domains but instead offers support to the transferring service member and connects him or her to the organizations/individuals which do provide these services. Unfortunately, no such comprehensive, end-to-end system currently exists to proactively engage service members in support of his or her transition from the military to the civilian sector (or End of Time in Service). The stressors that can result from transitions within any of the domains can accumulate and prevent Veterans from truly reaching their full potential.

By helping Veterans and their families to navigate their transition, we will ALL reap the benefits of the LDRSHIP (Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless-service, Honor, Integrity and Personal courage) that are the internalized values of many of our service men and women and vital to the resiliency and fabric of our nation in peace time, as well as war.