College VSO's

[Guest]

[TheShu]

I was reading this article entitled "Young veterans have little interest in father's organization" (hat tip to story at NC Post 2573) and was curious to know what your Post is doing to reach out to veterans attending colleges near you.

Now that the new GI bill has passed and more and more returning veterans will have the opportunity to attend colleges and universities, has your post made outreach efforts to the campuses near you? 

If you have, what have you done so far that other posts can emulate?  What has worked? What hasn't?  What can be done?  Is it as simple as having the Post Commander visit an established college group as a guest speaker?  Does the Post need to form an outreach committee to help establish a local campus group? 

Your thoughts?

[Redmaxx 7546]

I tried to start a veterans group at the local Community College but had no luck. I tried holding recruitment drives, advertised in both the school paper and the local paper but I could never get enough people to even start the club. I believe that I needed 25 people with 3/4 of them being current students. I have since given up.

[DoggyDaddy]

Redmax,
You tried.  You made an attempt and that is important and commendable.  Maybe try again in another year.

[Troy at VFW National]

Redmaxx . . .

Have you contacted some of the national-level veteran student groups to see about doing tie-ins locally? If interested, I could try to find some contact information for you. There are groups like Student Veterans of America, although they are usually fairly small organizations.

I have spoken with ROTC recruiters. They are having trouble getting much response from vets on campus too.

Thanks
Troy

[mickeyg]

I maintain the blog for NC post 2573, work at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and serve on a veteran's task force at the university.  Our community is engaged in attempting to make UNCW welcoming to active duty (we have many due to our proximity to Camp LeJeune), spouses and dependents, and veterans.

The school has a student veteran's organization started by a fellow Viet Nam vet.  It was the efforts of the student group that pressed the university to take action to make life better for vets and the associated constituencies.  Believe it or not vets finally are exempt from taking physical education due to basic training.

Aside from the committee we have school web pages for the vets and our VFW post is listed on those pages along with a link to our blog.  We also link to the University from our blog pages.

Not much but we have made a start.  I can supply further info to anyone that needs it.

Mike Barnes vfwpostblog@earthlink.net

[easingwr670]

Mike maintains  www.vfwwebcom.org/nc/post2573   

[NC Sentinel]

I have sent a link of my blog to all NC colleges and asked for them to publish where they can. Have not been that successful as of yet, but I'm still staying in touch with the Public Relations Departments of each school. One day someone will find it important to have the link published.

FYI, if you would, please pass on the following link to the NC Department of POW/MIA Affairs. There you will find daily updates of POW/MIA news from around the world and DoD.

www.vfwwebcom.org/nc/powmia

You can also sign up to receive daily email updates of headlines at:
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If you have any questions, please contact me at: ncsentinel@gmail.com