A Call to Action and A Blueprint for Change
Executive Summary
Karl Monger
www.KarlPMonger.com
Forewords by Sgt 1st Class (retired) Michael Schlitz and Kelly Burris, PhD, MBC
© 2017 by Karl P. Monger. All rights reserved.
*****
Few are those who willingly go into harm’s way to keep us free.
Great are their personal and professional sacrifices.
They have earned our gratitude and respect.
We are committed to helping them live with purpose and hope. Join us.
*****
This book is aimed at two primary audiences. The first: the soldier who is transitioning from military service to civilian life. Every veteran experiences transition, whether it is beneficial or detrimental, whether it starts tomorrow or may have been ongoing for years. Veterans need this book to transition better.
The second audience is comprised of the communities that will become home for these warriors. You are likely a member of one of these communities, and with membership comes responsibility. Learning what you can do and doing it can make all the difference in a soldier’s civilian life.
Veteran transition is broken. Post 9/11 veteran unemployment rates are 20% higher than non-veterans. Homeless veterans haunt our street corners, and a 2016 VA study declares that twenty veterans commit suicide every day, and 65% of them are over the age of 50.
What we are doing now doesn’t work. Veterans return home from active duty to a community that doesn’t remember them, where they no longer fit in, where their friends and networks just aren’t the same. Veterans have difficulty staying in school, rarely land jobs at the same levels of responsibility and authority they experienced in the military, and face lengthy delays in receiving care from the VA for physical and emotional injuries. Many turn to alcohol to self-medicate in an attempt to cope.
To them it seems as if they are the only one failing at their transition, and that makes the failure more acute. They are unaware of the other veterans who have gone through the same struggles—but locally veterans just like them live and work, those who have succeeded despite the system, and they hold the keys to success.
US Army veteran Karl Monger uses his personal story to reveal this common struggle of transition, and he urges veterans who have successfully transitioned to connect with others and guide veterans just now going through transition.
Through a special relationship with an uncle who fought in World War I, to his service in as a captain in the famed 1st Ranger Battalion, plus over twenty years of helping veterans, author Karl Monger gives emotional and hard-hitting examples to illustrate the issues, and he shows how simple, local, preventive, and proactive steps can set a veteran on the right path toward life-long purpose and hope.
We can do transition better. And we will.
for more information, contact karl@karlpmonger.com or call 817-567-3293.
All proceeds from Common Sense Training will be donated to GallantFew, Inc.
