Operation Dragon Foundation - Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson

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B-6 Arctic Warrior April 8, 2011 Engineers mentor Chester Valley elementary students Troops motivate local youth with math, sports By Sgt. Isaac Reighard 56th Engineer Co. The 2010-2011 school year at Chester Valley Elementary School started with a new twist: Soldiers volunteering as mentors for students. After a pilot program during the 2009- 2010 school year, the partnership program was fully implemented in June 2010 and is scheduled to last until the end of this school year. Soldiers from the 6th Engineer Battalion (Airborne) have volunteered more than 230 hours mentoring more than 20 students from Chester Valley Elementary School. These volunteer hours involved coaching and assisting students with reading, math, science experiments and various extracurricular activities. The Soldier-mentors are part of the 6th Engineer Battalion’s community engagement program. The program is designed to promote a sense of service and volunteerism within the battalion, as well as to strengthen relationships with the Anchorage community. “Integrating ourselves with the Anchorage community is essential in fostering mutual understanding and support between our Soldiers and the people we are sworn to defend,” said Lt. Col. Marc Hoffmeister, 6th Engineer Battalion commander. “The school partnership program is also an opportunity to give back to a community that has provided us such wonderful support over the years,” Mary Rawlins, a fifth-grade teacher at Chester Valley Elementary School, said her class appreciates the program. “My class loves their mentors,” Rawlins said. “The students form an attachment to the Soldiers that come in and see the Soldiers in a very unique role … like an older brother or uncle and as a teacher too.” Rawlins was in charge of the running club that was formed at the beginning of the school year and lasted through September 2010. The Soldier-mentors provided coaching that helped improve students’ running techniques and performance. They were also instrumental in helping to organize and manage the running club, according to Rawlins. “When the mentors had better ideas for running activities or how to set things up, I applied them,” Rawlins said. “This was my first time doing the running club, so I was making it up as I went along.” The culminating event of the running season was a competition with other nearby schools. The main event was a one-mile race in which students ran in designated age groups. Soldiers from the 6th Engineer Battalion arrived with healthy snacks and Gatorade to support the Chester Valley Elementary students as they finished the race. In addition to the running club, Soldiers participated in the school’s homework club every Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The club includes students from second to fifth grades who are in need of assistance on assigned homework. One of the main coaching focuses for the Soldier-mentors is to encourage students to solve math problems without the aid of calculators. They also use learning games and other interactive techniques to motivate the students. One extracurricular activity that has recently generated momentum is a drama club, which began in February. The Soldier-mentors managed to generate enough interest in the club that its members are now preparing for a live performance scheduled for April 28. The play “A Thousand Cranes,” is set in post-World War II Japan. Soldiers from the 6th Engineer Battalion will help coach the student actors and some may serve as narrators alongside students. Spc. Michael Miller, a volunteer Soldier from the 56th Engineer Company, said he is thrilled to have this opportunity to be a role model at the school. “The kids always have questions about our jobs in the Army, which I find as an opportunity to tell them how school helped prepare me for what I do now,” Miller said. “They usually appreciate the perspective. The funniest thing is sometimes I learn things from them, since they have a totally different way of seeing things.” Sgt. Isaac Reighard, 56th Engineer Company, 6th Engineer Battalion (Airborne), assists three fifth-grade students as they assemble a monthly school newsletter, at Chester Valley Elementary School, Feb. 28. Several Soldiers from the 56th volunteer at the school through the U.S. Army Alaska and Anchorage School District Partnership Program. (Courtesy photo)
B-8 Arctic Warrior April 8, 2011 Bystander intervention key to stopping assault By Staff Sgt. Carolyn (Viss) Herrick <strong>Joint</strong> <strong>Base</strong> Pearl Harbor-Hickam Public Affairs JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR- HICKAM, Hawaii – “Every single day for over a year, he’d come home and beat me. I came to work with black eyes, fat lips, and bruises on the sides of my neck. Nobody did anything. Nobody called the cops, nobody sent me to family advocacy; no one wanted to say anything.” This was the testimony of a now 29-yearold female staff sergeant, 10 years after her brutal first marriage, as she opened discussion at Bystander Intervention Training. “He forbade me from talking to men. He threatened to kill me, and I believed him,” said Staff Sgt. Christine Kearney-Kurt, a 65th Airlift Squadron communications systems operator and instructor for Bystander Intervention Training, a new mandatory program for all Air Force military service members and civilians. In the gender-segregated forum, men and women alike are encouraged to speak openly about their experiences, discussing how they, as bystanders, might have colossal impact on potential victims of physical or sexual assault. “It’s a little bit different than ‘death by PowerPoint,’ or a typical briefing,” said Master Sgt. Jason Redford, the 647th Logistics Readiness Squadron acting first sergeant, and a victim advocate a n d B I T instructor. “ I t ’s i n - teractive. I t ’s n o t canned. You’re asking for their direct thoughts, their ideas, and things they’ve seen in the Air Force, right or wrong.” The intent of the curriculum is to help Airmen assess if, when and how to intervene in questionable, intimidating or even explicitly dangerous situations, in a non-attribution environment. “Bottom line is giving people options and preparing them beforehand,” Redford said. “When it comes to sexual assault, we When it comes to sexual assault, we can talk about the end result, but often people aren’t looking at the steps that lead up to that. can talk about the end result, but often people aren’t looking at the steps that lead up to that.” In the breakout sessions, which Kearney- Kurt said are different for males and females, they talk about the “continuum of harm,” which is a scale of things that lead up to sexual assault. That could be anything, from sexist jokes to inappropriate e- mails. “As you allow those behaviors to occur, it becomes inappropriate touching, (and) then it could turn to an assault,” which isn’t always necessarily rape, she said. Sexual assault can occur on many levels. Allowing and tolerating negative or derogatory behaviors in the Air Force breaks down unit cohesion, morale and productivity, and decreases the ability to accomplish the mission, agreed many of the females during one open forum. If those things escalate, they could very quickly turn into a full-blown assault. “We want a culture shift,” Kearney-Kurt said. “We want to get people to understand that the person being assaulted, if it’s a woman, could be your girlfriend or sister. That (analogy) seems to hit home with the men. They don’t want their sister to be assaulted.” Every person is a bystander, she said. The BIT is geared to help every bystander be able to intervene on another’s behalf. “This is being taught at college campuses now,” she said. “Eventually, we want the whole country doing this. Hopefully it’ll be a learn-by-seeing thing. It’s like paying it forward. Someone helped me; let me help someone else.” April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. For more information on sexual assault prevention, response or reporting procedures, or to become a victim advocate, contact your installation Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. Information is also available on the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response website at http:// www.sapr.mil/. VA budget request signals commitment By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s $132 billion 2012 budget request for the Veterans Affairs Department demonstrates that despite a tight fiscal environment, U.S. officials stand by their commitment to men and women who have served in uniform, Deputy VA Secretary W. Scott Gould told American Forces Press Service. “It says that VA and veterans are the president’s top priority,” Gould said during an interview in Snowmass Village, Colo., last week at the 25th National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic. Gould said the budget request reflects a commitment to VA’s charter as President Abraham Lincoln enunciated it in his second inaugural address: “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.” “If you look at our fiscal year 2010 budget, it was the largest in 30 years,” Gould said. “It was fol- lowed by another roughly 7 and a half percent in 2011, and now we have another 3 and a half percent on top of that. So it is a striking level of investment. “We are working really hard to make sure we use every dollar wisely,” he said. The fiscal 2012 budget request supports VA’s five-year strategic plan, with priority goals to: - End veteran homelessness by 2015, with $940 million in the fiscal 2012 request for programs to reduce and prevent homelessness among veterans and their families; - Implement a paperless claimsprocessing system by 2012, a major step toward eliminating the disability claims backlog so no veteran has to wait more than 125 days for a decision; - Build and deploy an automated Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits system to speed tuition and housing payments for all eligible veterans; - Create the next-generation electronic record system that begins when service members enlist in the military and remains with them through retirement or after they return to civilian life; - Improve the quality, access and value of mental health care provided, with $6.2 million in the fiscal 2012 request for mental health programs, including $68 million for suicide prevention; and - Deploy a new management program to improve client access to VA services and benefits by June 2012. “We have a very bold strategy,” Gould said. “And we are very focused on making sure that we get the resources to support it in a way that ties the budget to this strategic strategy.” Much of VA’s focus is on making the organizational changes and systems improvements required for it to function more efficiently and effectively, Gould said. “We want to invest in the people, their training and the systems that make our organization more intelligent, more able to deliver on the promise of these priorities and the overall strategy,” he explained. VA is working to become Secretary Eric K. Shinseki’s vision of a veteran-centric, results-driven, forward-looking system, he said. This, Gould said, involves new management systems that ensure accountability while eliminating waste and improving the delivery of high-quality and timely veterans benefits and services. To that end, VA is seeking nearly $3.2 billion to maintain and improve its information technology systems. Gould reported progress already made on the IT front. “Two years ago, only 20 percent of projects were on time, on budget and to technical standards,” he said. “Today, 80 percent are.” Similar improvements are bearing fruit in how VA manages its human resources. “Two years ago when we started hiring people, it took us 108 days,” Gould said. “Now we have it down to 76, and will achieve a goal ... of 60 days, the private-sector standard.” Another improvement uses strategic sourcing, with VA’s separate operating units pooling their buying power to get the best price for their goods and services. Previously, the department’s units did their buying separately. In addition, VA adopted a strategic capital investment plan that improves the way it manages its infrastructure -- 6,500 buildings nationwide, with a replacement value of $87 billion. “Two years ago, there was no integrated process for evaluating where you would invest your next dollar in that physical infrastructure,” Gould said. Today, VA makes a business case for every proposal, pools proposals, then evaluates and prioritizes them. “So now we can go to the secretary and say, ’For the limited dollars we have, here is the best investment we can make to improve the security and safety of our veterans and improve quality and access,’” Gould said. He noted an adage in the health care realm: health care is 85 percent business and 15 percent medicine. The VA’s care providers, who make up the country’s largest direct-care health system, receive consistently high marks in the quality of care they provide, he said. Many, he added, are on par with their counterparts at prestigious hospitals and medical centers. “So think about how much cost (savings) and how much potential efficiency is created if you can improve the underlying systems” that support them, Gould said, “while giving the doctors the maximum freedom to make the best judgment they can based on health care principles.”
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