Annual Report Released By Conservation Legacy

United States., Congress., Senate. (2007). Looking at our homeless veterans programs: how effective are they?: hearing before the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Ninth Congress, second session, March 16, 2006. Washington: U.S.

The company I chose for this assignment is the Missouri Department of Conservation. It is a Missouri state agency whose mission is to protect and conserve Missouri’s natural resources.

The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform that grew from the 1890s to the 1920s. Social reformers and journalists, like Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell were some of the powerful voices for progressivism. “They concentrated on exposing the evils of corporate greed, combating fear of immigrants, and urging Americans to think hard about what democracy meant.” Many progressive reformers wanted to end corruption in the government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, and improve working conditions. It was also an era of conservationists. Conservationists are people who protect and preserve the environment and wildlife. Throughout the Progressive Era, there were many conservationists who wrote and described nature, but the most well-known figure in conservation was John Muir. John Muir worked to protect Earth’s beauty by traveling and exploring nature, co-founding the Sierra Club, and by influencing others through his writings and by showing some of the most important people how the wildlife was magnificent.

According to Volunteers of America, over 670,000 Americans are homeless, 48 million people go hungry every night, and 46.2 million Americans live in poverty. In 2013, Volunteers of America helped hover 83,000 homeless individuals. This organization works to prevent and end homelessness through a range of support services including eviction prevention, emergency services, transitional housing and permanent affordable housing. By doing so they engage homeless individuals, including youth and families with children, and stay with them for as long as it takes to return them to self-sufficiency. This organization reach out to homeless individuals through street outreach and mobile outreach services and engage with homeless individuals, youth and families with children. Moreover, they provide assistance that ranges from paying a first month’s rent to offering permanent supportive housing so that people with disabilities can become stable and productive members of their communities.

This social program demonstration took place in twelve locations starting in the year of 1971 and ending by 1980. Nearly fifty thousand families were assisted with cash allowances (US House, 2003).

Conservation was the most important reform, from this time period, since it worked towards protecting the United State’s physical environment which leads to obtaining the essential resources of nature, preserving the naturality of the planet, and living a higher quality of life.

In addition to programs of the federal government, many private organizations work to prevent or end the homelessness of veterans. For example, the Wounded Warrior Project assists wounded veterans to help them recover from their physical and/or mental injuries and reintegrate into productive roles in society. Enabling them to provide for themselves, helps prevent them from becoming homeless (How We Serve). The American Legion has a Homeless Veterans Task Force to address the problem of veteran homelessness. They also work with federal organizations in drafting laws and policies to care for veterans’ needs, as well as working with corporate partners to promote hiring of veterans (Homeless Veterans (The American Legion)). The Disabled American Veteran (DAV) organization works with veterans to help them get the

Program planning is a process to achieve a particular goal and/or mission. Program planning is an organized process through which a set of coordinated activities or interventions is developed to address and facilitate change in some or all of the identified problems. Program evaluation provides useful information for improving the programs and the service delivery systems. Program evaluation is to improve the program planning, effectiveness, design, and efficiency. The two are different processes, but ideally they hold the same goals and/or mission. The evaluation process takes place after the planning of a

It supports a broad range of local service programs that engage thousands of Americans in intensive service to meet critical community needs. It also works with the governor-appointed state service commissions to provide grants to public and non- profit organizations that sponsor service around the country. They have grants that assist these groups in recruiting, training and placing AmeriCorps members to meet critical community needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. The purpose of it is to engage AmeriCorps members in direct service and capacity-building to address the community needs. They say that local programs design service activities for a team members serving full

Policy evaluation applies accepted social science research methods to public programs. The same research designs used in laboratory experiments are not always practicable in the field, but the same principles can guide the planning and execution of policy evaluation.

National Level: H.R. 251, a bill that addresses homeless veterans, is titled Homes for Heroes Act of 2015. H.R. 251 was introduced in the House on January 9, 2015 and passed the House without amendment on July 14, 2015. The bill is to establish in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) a Special Assistant for the VA. The special assistant will make certain veterans have fair access to HUD housing and homeless assistance program, coordinate, all HUD programs and activities relating to veterans, and serve as a liaison with the VA (Congress.gov, nod).

The Vietnam Veterans of America is a charity in Georgia that serves all veterans and we will ask them to donate used clothes, shoes, appliances and other household items to soldiers and service men and women. We will appeal to the Coastal Habitat for Humanity to donate time and equipment to build houses for low-income residents. United Way will collaborate with CAT to give free bus passes to those struggling financially, but are trying to get to work and achieve economic independence. We will appeal to Toys R Us to donate educational games and toys to the several YMCAs we support as well as the Greenbriar Children’s Center, Hodge Memorial Day care center as well as dozens of the other school readiness and youth academic programs that United Way supports.

Since I have chosen a local approach for helping to solve veteran homelessness, I found a non-profit organization in my area to donate to called Priority Veteran. This organization recommends giving “donations of unused household goods such as cleaning supplies, bedding and kitchen items” (Skowronek 1). Giving these basic necessity items to the homeless will allow them to save money, which they can in turn spend on things that could help themselves back into society like housing, medical needs, or finding jobs. Donations like these to Priority Veteran have been proven to be effective by “people volunteering and helping at Protority Veteran in 2014 caused ‘the number of homeless veterans [in Birmingham] at 174, down 10 percent from last January and down more than 60 percent from January of 2005’” (Gordon 6). Since I have found that this solution is proven to work, my donations every year will definitely help to decrease the amount of veteran homelessness in

According to Deborah Bailey, some of the ways these programs are getting funding currently are non-traditional. Funding is coming from the private sector because the public system is not completely on board with these programs at the present time and not as willing to experiment. The article ends speaking about how everyone is effected positively with these programs so far (Bailey p.28). These programs have started the conversation and will help build support for a universal model used by all communities just as the

So many Veterans, even with the HUD VASH voucher system, are living in sub par conditions while landlords are pocketing overage monies for personal gain. Our mission is to offer not only housing, but a more complete and all-inclusive approach to treating our veterans, for future success. We aim to be an extension from existing VA programs and become a direct link to job training – while bridging Veterans back into society. Veterans are faced daunting challenges while transitioning into civilian society – which include—lack of camaraderie, lack of transferable job skills through the lack of support network lack of identity outside the military, and unemployment. Our mission is to alleviate these problems while benefiting the VA, overall society,