Eric Greitens on rebuilding after Katrina and helping veterans continue to serve at home
Greitens is the volunteer Chairman and CEO of The Mission Continues and a U.S. Navy SEAL Officer. He recently wrote a book about his humanitarian work abroad called Strength and Compassion.
HPR: You have worked in many different sectors from military to education. In your work as a White House Fellow in New Orleans, what was your experience when you were sent to assist with the education rebuilding after Katrina? How successful would you say that the University Building America Project is?
EG: I started doing my White House Fellowship just a couple days after Hurricane Katrina and I had a really incredible experience because when I walked into the Department of Housing and Urban Development it was like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I saw all these people walking all over handing off pieces of paper, making phone calls, sending emails, trying to get a hold of what was actually happening. Kim Kendrick, who was an Assistant Secretary of Housing but at the time was Secretary of Senior Counsel walks by me and she hands me a piece of paper and she says, “go do something about this, the secretary wants somebody to do something.” And I looked at it and it was a printout from the Auburn University website. … I called the dean of the school. I had no idea what the secretary wanted, but I called, and I said, “Tell me what you think about Hurricane Katrina” and he said, “Oh my god, I’m so glad that you called because we have all of these students in and all of these professors and we’re trying to figure out what we can do to help! … We want to go down there and bring our students and our professors and figure out a way we can be of assistance.” That day I called other deans of schools of architecture and all of them had the same reaction. … So what became obvious to me just after a morning of talking to these folks is that the country has so much talent in its schools of architecture and construction, but there was no way to interface that in the federal process. So I wrote a memo at the end of my first afternoon suggesting that we should give grants to universities in order for them to partner with non-profit organizations to help with the rebuilding in the hurricane-affected area. … Eventually, we got several million dollars and were able to use that to give to schools of architecture and construction and planning to partner with non-profits in hurricane-affected areas.
The other program we were able to set up had money specifically allocated for historically black colleges and universities. We opened it up for HBCUs so that it didn’t just have to be a school of architecture or construction; it could for example be their school of education or their school of nursing, but the idea was we wanted to be able to assist them in helping them use their talented students in order to be of affect in the hurricane zone. So the credit that I can take, the very small credit, is having a few conversations on that first day and kind of coming up with this idea. I went down to New Orleans several times to implement the program and to launch the program, but all the important work, all the ground work, ended up being done by the universities that were on the ground.
I think one of the lessons that comes from that is that we often times have in the Unites States incredible resources of talent and energy that aren’t tapped into by the federal government when they’re trying to solve an important problem. So what we have to do as policy-makers is figure out how we can utilize all of that energy, all of the intelligence, and all of that compassionate ability to solve problems, whether its responding to a hurricane or not. The University Building America Project was a wonderful very small effort. It was something I was able to do as a White House fellow given my position there.
HPR: If seems like you are attracted to efforts and causes that rebuild and revitalize. With your Center for Citizen Leadership, in what ways are you bringing together veterans and citizens? What kind of change do you think these interactions enact and why is it important?
EG: The root of what we want to do is to help people rethink and reform what it means to say “thank you” and what it means to say “welcome home” to a wounded and disabled veteran. For many of our wounded and disabled veterans the greatest need that they have is the need to find another place to serve in the community. The men and women that are coming come from Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters in the global war on terrorism have a strength that comes from their service and many of them also have a particular strength that comes from learning how to live with and overcome a wound or disability. Too often when we welcome those veterans home we do so with very good hearts and kind hearts but what we see first is the wound or disability. What I want to encourage all citizens to see is to see the strength and the ability that these wounded and disabled veterans have and to help them to use that ability to start to serve again. We can say “welcome home” not with charity but with a challenge, that challenge being helping wounded and disabled veterans to serve their community and their country again. A lot of people in the country are worried about what’s been happening in Iraq or Afghanistan and what’s happening with disabled veterans, but they don’t necessarily have a really positive way to engage with the issue. What we’ve done with The Mission Continues Program and the Center for Citizen Leadership is try to set up a structure so that anyone who cares about this issue can engage in it in a one hundred percent positive way through community service and building stronger communities with veterans and their fellow citizens side by side.
HPR: What are possible solutions for the homelessness that plagues many veterans when they come home?
EG: There’s only one veteran that I’ve worked with, who is a global war on terrorism veteran, who had a period of homelessness. That period of homelessness was brought about in his case mostly due to substance abuse. For him to get effective treatment, as for many folks in the homeless population, he really had to address that substance abuse issue.
HPR: Was that something that stemmed from his time at war?
EG: I think that he’d had some substance abuse issues before he joined the military. You never know if someone’s time in service led to those difficulties or if they would have fallen into them otherwise. What’s certainly the case is that we need to have a full spectrum of services available for veterans when they come home to help them reintegrate into society. For some of those veterans there needs to be a net of services available. The government can do part of that through the veterans administration but ultimately it has to be the responsibility of communities to really step up and make sure that those veterans are taken care of as well.
HPR: Should there be increased local programs?
EG: What’s always the case is that the federal government can provide some essential services in general to veterans, but if you’re really going to transform anyone’s life you have to do it on an individual level. That can only be done when individuals in a community take ownership and make it their mission to actually be of assistance to a veteran who comes home. You have to engage local communities to really transform lives.
HPR: Are there any policies in Congress right now related to military concerns that you find promising?
EG: We were big advocates for the Serve America Act and we were actually, the Mission Continues and the Center for Citizen Leadership, were the primary voice for veterans in the Serve America Act. We helped to design and then advocate for the Veterans Core which is going to be part of the Serve America Act. … It’s been passed now. I think that the Serve America Act and the Veterans Core portion of the Serve America Act will be very important for helping veterans of this generation to be able to serve again.
HPR: Your book Strength and Compassion that focuses on people stricken with violence and how they’ve overcome those hardships. Why did you choose to do a book on this topic and what were your motivations and inspirations?
EG: It’s a book of photographs and essays from eight different countries where I did some kind of humanitarian work or documentary photography work overseas. … We can learn a tremendous amount from people who have lived through some of the world’s most difficult circumstances. I worked with street children in Bolivia, with refugees in Rwanda, and with refugees in Croatia. What you see is just some real incredible lessons of how people live through these incredible hardships and yet emerge with hope. I have in fact used many of the lessons that I try to capture in Strength and Compassion … in the work that we do to help transform lives here at home. What I really wanted to do was just to share with folks those lessons in the hopes that they can be helpful to them in their own lives.