hVET Planner
hVET@innovativesocialsolutions.org

If your veterans support group would like to host a homeless Veterans Empowerment Tent at your location, read the article below. I give a general outline of how I m going about it. You can modify it however it works for you.

The first thing is to understand that hVET is not primarily an event to serve homeless veterans. It is not envisioned to be a stand down or another such event. It will include some elements of a stand down, but has a different focus. The idea of hVET is to show the community a new way to deal with homeless veterans as well as other homeless persons.

HVET is a marketing campaign that will also help a lot of homeless veterans and by association, general homeless people as well. The idea is to raise awareness in the community of the scope of the issue in the local area. The event is designed to help remove many homeless from the streets and into programs designed to shelter them and manage a plan leading to self-support while raising the awareness in the local community about the true scope of the issue here in San Diego.

hVET should be located as close to a major highway as possible, Choose a highway with an available field large enough to host something as large as a circus. Have a large tent, whatever you can find, but large enough to cover a couple of hundred people. The tent area should be no more than one-quarter of the total area designated for the event. There should be plenty of room on the grounds for such things as a shower truck/trailer, food trucks, about 10 to 15 small tables scattered around with room between for private conversations and other needs.

The concept of hVET is to brand the issue of homeless veterans while offering a potential game changer in homeless support. As a formerly homeless veteran myself, I have a different take on what is needed to help homeless people, in general, recover their lives.

I went through the darkness for over a decade. I survived three suicide attempts overall. I know the loss of faith in humanity. I KNOW how it feels to think there is nothing left for you and you are just in the way.

I realize that the Human Spirit is very resolute. We have the innate ability to tackle any challenge. But we need to believe in ourselves to use it. I had to find my way out over time and many trials and errors in experiments I did, but it taught me some lessons I will now begin sharing to help get a handle on the homeless issue.

hVET Tent

Designed to make an impact on the community awareness of the homeless veteran issue.

Located as close to a well-traveled roadway as possible, ideally an urban Interstate highway. The idea is to get the event seen by as many people as possible. As it creates curiosity within the community it will be featured on local news.

As the awareness raises in the local area, larger donors will see the new paradigm in homeless support and want to help. many smaller donors will also see it. Some will donate online and some will remember it when they see an opportunity to donate in their daily lives, as outlined below.

hVET is designed to connect many homeless veterans and other homeless people with support networks that will be invited to attend.
Many faith-based and other homeless outreach teams will be invited to participate as attendees. There will be “counseling tables” placed around the property to give outreach workers and a potential client a place to have a private discussion to plan how to get the client off the streets.

The idea that will be presented by hVET is that in order to be most effective in helping homeless people you need to tend to their mental health issues first. It would be a hard sell to say that the homeless person does not take a hit to their self-image. I had every reason to have a good self-image, but it took a big hit once I was on the streets and led into a deepening of my depression until it became a life-threatening situation.

To boost homeless veterans and others self-image I plan to have a number of motivational speakers participate to give speeches that are focused specifically to the homeless population.

I believe one of the best gifts you can give a homeless person is to help rebuild their self-respect. When I was on the streets one of the most memorable parts of a day was when someone showed kindness. In fact, I took that concept and built it into my four steps to overcome depression that I present on my personal blog.

Along with the tent should be a few services the homeless people need, like showers, bathrooms and other services. If possible, get a permit from your local area to let the homeless attendees create a camp in the corner/edge of the property to stay for the duration of the event.

In jurisdictions where it can be arranged, have scheduled meals served. You can use bag lunches or any way practical for your location and group.

Make a large sign from lights, like Christmas lights, to outline the words “homeless Veterans Empowerment Tent” in large lights easily readable from the road. Be sure to have the sign permitted by the fire dept and any other agency.

the h in “homeless Veterans Empowerment Tent” is intended to be lower case as a way to show homelessness will become a lower issue in veterans lives resulting from this production.

Make it a three-day event with a setup and a take down day, five days in total on the property.

During that time, fill the time slots with as many motivational speakers as you can get to participate. Maybe even life coaches. The idea is to find speakers and other talent that can make presentations designed to be inspirational to help change the mindset of a down and out, depressed homeless veteran into an empowered individual determined to do what they can do to help themselves as well as to prepare them to be more capable of working a plan with a case manager.

In between speakers, there could be many forms of presentations, like personal stories of overcoming issues by not giving up, local bands and other local performers that could be given a free venue to show their talents, and more depending on your location.

The overall energy of hVET should be a festive event, a celebration of the new way to help homeless people. A celebration of new lives for those who find their way off the streets through hVET.

One of my philosophies is that the most important part of empowering someone is to show them you think they are worth the effort to do something for them. Even if all you can do is give a homeless person a cup of hot coffee, it is something kind someone did for them. This event is all about the homeless veteran. It is designed to re-empower those who empowered the United States of America.

When I finally got tired of the lifestyle of taking medications and still being on the street and depressed, this principle came into my mind. My first experiment, that began my journey of restoration of my soul, and led me out of depression, was based on paying attention to people showing kindness.

The ways I plan to raise funding to produce the tent are outlined below. I may add more ideas as this evolves, but feel free to raise funding any way you can. Share your ideas with all hVET groups.

The key to getting funding for this event in as quick a way as possible is to approach the funding issue on multiple fronts. This will require a team of volunteers to help manage the network. I am not proposing door to door as I feel that should be used only if necessary. I believe other methods will be more productive.

The first step is finding a few local motivational speakers or life coaches that see the value of being part of this event and are willing to donate their time. Their talks should be tailored specifically to the homeless situation. Get their agreement to speak in an email and let them know when you have a firm date.

The second step is getting on the news to announce the plan for hVET and hVET2. This will introduce the plan to the local community. The idea will be explained to a large portion of the community. Many of them will tell others. Ideally, the idea and plan leading to the homeless Veterans Empowerment Town should be announced on a morning, or other, news talk show. This way there is time for discussion. The idea can be more fully explored. I have one of the motivational speakers agreed to appear on such a show if I get one booked.

Put out press releases to any and all news programs that might have an interest in a new idea on helping homeless veterans.

Once the idea is widely known, use that to start a local campaign for fundraising. Some ideas are below.

Donation Cans

Use some empty and cleaned cans of the type Pringles potato chips come in and create a wrap for the can with the hVET logo and information about your local group. Secure the top with strong tamper resistant taps as well as some sort of seal to show tampering. Offer the management a percentage of the donations, if they require anything.

This will work best on a large scale. In a large city, it could take multiple area managers for this method to work out. In a large city, like San Diego and metro area, it could take maybe 10 area managers that are dedicated to finding new locations for the cans and coming around regularly to collect the donations and reset the cans with a new seal.
Ideally, the area manager will find enough locations that it becomes a full-time effort to continuously make the rounds of their network.

Any compensation can be discussed with the volunteer under whatever restrictions there might be in your local area.

Church Promotion

Network with churches that have an interest in helping homeless veterans as well as other homeless people. If they agree that the idea for hVET can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of homeless support, ask the pastor, or another responsible party, to speak about it in their services.

Either take up special collections to donate to hVET or have collection plates in the back of the church. Ask the church to do this once a week. The church could help even more by totaling the donations and sending a check so you do not need to send volunteers to the church networks.

Corporate Sponsorships

Many corporations or other businesses local to your area would love to help an effort they believe will actually show success with the homeless veteran issue. Hit them up for not only donations, but the opportunity to present the idea to their employees. Maybe make teams out of each company to have competition to boost that funding stream.

Corporations would get public recognition on any public presentation as well as in hVET materials.

Stay on the talk show and news programs lists. Each time an appearance is made, ask for donations. In your local area, look for any level celebrity that can promote hVET. It is a great cause and if more people knew about it, it would be more likely to attract adequate funding.

Get creative. For example, start a GoFundMe.com account and promote it on social media and any other venue you can find. Go to HubSpot.som and learn what you can about promoting a social network and use it to promote the hVET idea and attract donors. Post your fundraisers, like GoFundMe or KickStarter to your Facebook page and then share everywhere.

Once a few locations are promoting hVET in their areas the idea will get a lot of national attention. This can lead to what I am hoping to call “The Summer OF The Homeless Veterans Re-Empowerment”

As more and more groups announce their own hVET event, it will become easier and easier to find funding for your local group.