New
Mission Statement: The Coming Home Project supports veterans and their families by
empowering veterans to re-enter civilian society. The project is
committed to integral approaches to healing and service.
Dr. Jeanne Douglas
spent the first half of the meeting making a presentation about the
Oak Park Vet Center. The director of the Center, she is trained as
a clinical psychologist. The Center started in 1979. In 1991 it's
mission was to serve anyone in combat and then in 1995 they also
began serving anyone who was sexually harassed in the military. In
1906 they added bereavement for families who lost someone in the
current war. The Center focuses on mental health. They are separate from the
Veterans Administration.
She spoke about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how
they recognize and treat it. She also spoke of a new injury which
is unique to the current wars which is called "Traumatic Brain
Injury" (TBI). It's symptoms are similar to PTSD, so they are still
learning how to diagnose it and differentiate it from PTSD.
Dr. Douglas was able to help us better understand the needs of
veterans and their families in our communities and how we might
better be of service to them. She told us about the "Standdown
2007" event taking place August 23-24 at the National Guard Armory
at 1551 N. Kedzie in Chicago. We agreed that we would like to participate
in this event and have some kind of booth at this event.
Dr. Douglas told us that there is a need for mental health professionals
such as therapist to be providing pro-bono work if they have some
kind of trauma training and are able to be a-political in their
involvement. There is also a need for lawyers to provide pro-bono
work, again if they are able to do so in ways that remain a-political. The last half of the meeting we discussed our mission and how
we would like to proceed. Everyone present at the meeting was a
member of the Zen Community. It seemed apparent at this point that
the core group of people wanting to do this project were from the
Zen Community. Everyone agreed that "coalition" was no longer an
accuate description, and agreed to rename this work as the "Coming
Home Project" or "Coming Home: a Project of the Zen Community
of Oak Park". We also discussed the mission statement and made
some changes.
We discussed the notion of spiritual warrior and agreed that for
each meeting in the future, we will continue to explore this concept
and how we might continue to incorporate it as part of our work.
We discussed the Standdown 2007 event and agreed that we would
like to participate in this and would explore the possibility of
having a booth at the event.
Next Meeting: Sunday, June 10, 2-5 pm at Zen
Community of Oak Park. Everyone is invited to join us to continue
moving this project forward.
Next Steps:
Joshin will contact Kathy Kozac who works for the Family
Readiness Program
David Pyle will give a report at the next meeting on the Standdown
2007 event and how we might participate.
Joshin will make up a brochure for the project
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