country to help this group and support them and those who are giving so much and so very rarely asked for a whole lot in return. so the first lady and dr. biden rolled out "joining forces" to give this support in a more public way and rally the country to axds and did this in april of last year. nine months into this. working down four plains public awareness, employment, education and wellness, particularly mental health. so public awareness, if you've been to a movie, watched any football in the last couple of weeks you've seen tom hanks, oprah winfrey, steven spielberg in public service ace nounsmentes calling the country to step up and do something and do what you do best in your communities to help, help serve this population.

it's also manifested in major league baseball outregion viting the first lady and dr. biden to join with them in game one of the world series, celebrating veterans of military families. nascar in the fall a great event, where nascar recognized 105,000 military families and spouses, and also came together to help work with an organization called the beacon council in south florida to commit to hiring 4,000 veterans just at the local level in the next two years. most recently and just last week we teamed with the ncaa, a great korgs, who's committed to doing 600 special things for military families in 2012 alone, and they kicked off a nice public service announcement and campaign. and then for those of you who own any tweens, you saw the first lady appear at the icarly on monday, again, with the important emphasis of raising and elevating the issue of what it means to a child to have a parent who is deployed and while

it may sound fundamental and rudimentary to those who have been a part of the military structure, with more than 60 percent of americans, who 190 million saying that ten years of war has had no personal impact on them, communication needs to be rudimentary and fundamental. these are the realities of mom and dad going off to war. that was great fun and an important perspective. e so that's public awareness. i think we'll copt to see more and more in those, to raise a public and national level elfine months to come. education, working down two lanes. first working with an organization called the national math-science initiative. i will refer to at a.p. on steroids. the most advanced a.p. courses in country, and institutionalizing those in public schools that have a large military kid population. and not known to most -- most

pub you -- well, most military children go to a public school that is not a d.o.d. school. this is an effort to cement for the long-term advanced educational opportunities. as we do that we're looking to cement opportunities that are sustainable for the long haul educating teachers. working with 100 universities around the country with the goal of getting them to commit to training all of the teachers and their respective institutions in some fundamental course relating to military child and what it means to have a military child in their classroom. simple example is, if you're a public teacher in hopkinsville, kentucky near fort campbell and have a couple of young kids falling asleep and you're teemping a sixth grade class, they're falling asleep in the middle of clats it would be healthy for you to have an understanding that, hey, this young kid's parent is in eastern afghanistan. you may or may not have heard from the parent in a couple of weeks.

mom or dad is stressed. gone eight or nine months. you can, i think anyone at a human level can appreciate the challenge there's and we want our nation's future teachers to have that same perspective. the great news, they've stepped up in great ways led by prestigious institution, harvard among them. then in the world of wellness or behavioral health, working on two pieces. one, and they're fairly broad. there isn't a day that goes by we don't read something in the newspaper about ptsd and tbi. obviously, the invisibility wounds of this war and the signature wounds of this war although they are hardly new issues. these same issues have been around for every war. in just the last two weeks, we've taken two specific steps to help address this. the first of which is, we believe firmly that because this population is young, every one who has fought in these wars, with the exception of me, was in there 20s and 30s when they did

it. they're aaron for 50 or 60 more years. this is a long term -- you've got to think long term for this and along those lines, invested a significant amount of time with all of the nation's medical colleges and asked them to come together with one commitment. to train the nation's future physicians in understanding ptsd and tbi and the military cultural competency. the reason being, more than half of veterans in this country do not seek medical care within the v.a. or d.o.d. systems. in order to address important long-term behavioral health issues all of the physicians around the country, whether you're in des moines, south florida, wherever you may be, you need to have some understanding because there's a tremendous impact on this grows population. the great news, they've stepped up and did it. a big announcement in richmond the week before last, virginia commonwealth, 130 medical colleges came together and said, and thought, this was an

important endeavor and we'll train the nation's future physicians in this, which is great. so that's the future. also working with 30 medical associations around the country. getting them, asking them to fundamentally do the same thing and more of that now context. that is, for all of the medical disciplines in the country, asking them to have nurses, physical therapists, physicians, emergency room surgeons, to have some basic understanding of ptsd and tbi so you can recognize it and take action. you don't have the to be an expert, but to have some knowledge base and word of the veteran family populations in the country. we believe this is a must and we'll see announcements about that here are in the coming weeks. the last thing i'd like to talk about which i think is an area where each of you could van impact and could you essentially do it to is in the world of employment. you may or may not know that young veteran unemployment in particular, for young veterans,

is significantly higher than the national average. comes as shock to many people. why? good question. why is that? number one reason is the nation lost 8 million jobs. that's -- and young veterans were hit particularly hard. there are some other pieces that go with that, including what historically has not been much of a need to translate those great skills you learned on the battlefield into civilian speak, but with fewer and fewer leaders in our nation's institutions having been veterans themself, it's important that young veterans be able to translate those great experiences into pieces, into civilian speak so that employers can understand it. i use myself as good example, were i seeking a job today, me try to say the three great thing ice do well, drive war ships, hunt submarines there's not a great need for that in the private sector these days. but there is probably some need for managing thousands of people in a $500 million budget, and

material in the billions of dollars. that's where young people need to seize the opportunities and translate those skills. so that's one piece. i'll talk about more good news in a second. so we really embarked in a significant effort to address this issue. in using the private sector. back in august, the president challenged the private sector to hire or train 100,000 veterans and military spouses by the end of 2013. so it's a pretty ambitious goal and you asked first lady and dr. biden to lead this effort under of us a pa seaspa cease of join with businesses big and small. the great news is companies have stepped up left and right and just under our umbrella, i mean, it's an enormous country, we've had about 1,500 countries already hire more than 35,000 veterans and spouses in just five months. so we're on an incredible

trajectory. these same companies committed to hire 135,000 in the next two years, veterans and spouses. so that's good news. 1,500 kpish 1,500, of course, is a dot in this country. it's nothing. you can see what a small group has done. our message is, let's continue to address this by spreading the news in the most impactful way where folks can make a difference, at the community level. i would suggest the mayors of this nation can really help with this, whether it's engagement with the local chamber of commerce, encouraging veteran hiring. what we find out is, for those who have done this, for the -- if you're a veteran and you're hiring a veteran you get it. you understand the type and quality of person you're getting. for those not in the veteran hiring barracks one of the sponsors of today's events, siemens last year said, we'll lean into this. we'll hire 300 veteran this

year. eight weeks later they did it. loved the people they hired. go to 450. eight weeks later, did it again. we love the quality of the people we're getting. this is not a population we had targeted, but they really are outstanding folks. we'll go to 600. in an eight-month period. great story. that's one company in the united states of america. replicate that times 29,000, and can you see the possibility of really helping the young veteran population in a very short period of time. so my ask of the group is, go back into your communities and spread the word. hire a veteran or a military spouse and you will find time and time again the quality of the person that you get, who, by the way, on the veterans' side is already a graduate of the world's greatest training institution regimen, the united states military is positive at the company level and good for the bottom line. and we've emphasized that.

it's one thing to hire a veteran because it's patriotic. ghats. a whole other thing to do it because it makes good business sense and is good for your bottom line. i get feedback every day from ceos saying, give me more. i love this group. they're talented. you are not alone in this endeavor. no one from the federal government is saying, mr. mayor, go out and do this and good luck. in just the last couple of months we've had the most robust public private partnership with i.t. united nations in the country to help this out and also policies in place to help. i'll talk about both of those. policies first. on november 21st, the president signed a law authorizing tax credits for hiring unemployed veterans, up to $5,600. we're less than two months into this. most of the nation, probably got a good injection of it in the news. that one night. but if you weren't watching the

news, you may not have known. this is huge news back in -- back on main street. so hire a veteran do it because it make goods sense for your company. and, oh, by the way, get a tax credit for it up to $5,6 h00. hire a wounded warrior that tax credit is up as well. financial incentive to do it as well. please, spread that word. i you'd every opportunity to tell every businessman and woman in this country, an opportunity to not only help out, do great things for your bottom line, but help your bottom line in the process ever doing it. the vote from that was a 520-0 vote from the perspective of the congress. clearly, this is a non-political issue. this is an american issue. while that policy piece as well is in place, also several other enablers that are helpful. i think secretary solis has talked about publicly the gold card. this is, a one stop --

department of labor one stops throughout the country, the veteran gold card is available to every post-9/11 veteran in the united states of america, and it gives priority counseling, resume building, skill translation services, to help take sergeant cooper and introduce him to the private sector in a meaningful way and put him or her at the top of the cube to find meaningful employment. i would also ask you to spread that word. the department of labor is deeply involved and has a great opportunity in terms of counseling and resume building and resume writing and skills translation. in a very personal way, and matching. to be able who with a need for a job and unemployed with a pool of opportunities that are out there. we've also worked, and most don't believe this it really is quite incredible, closely with i.d. giants, google linked in

monster.com to take what used to be 193 job portals for veterans around the country and there's still a fair number of those, and provide a single stop shopping opportunity for the veterans. as a result of collaborative effort between d.o.d., labor and the v.a. called the veterans job bank. and a great publish-private outreach, private sector organization called simply hired scoops all the veteran portals around country, pro bono and deposited 500,000 job, companies indicate add desire to hire a veteran in this one single stop veterans job bank. behind that, google developed what they referred to as a tagging scheme. where they have offered every single company in america who desires to use it the opportunity to electronically tag any job that they'd like to hire a veteran into and then google's very large search engines scoop these jobs up and deposit them into the veterans

job bank. so two-way street here. great for companies. because now they have an opportunity to advertise that, where they want jobs. great news for veterans. now they have one site they know they can go to that has a preponderance of jobs and don't have to work through that mow sea seayic mosaic. when a young person leaves service, if you came out of high school, graduated from high school, joined the military, spent four, five, six years in. got a lot of guidance, learned a lot. great leadership experience. now i'm out. wow. it's a pretty dramatic shift. so to help enable that process the president also asked the department of defense and v.a. to stand up a task force, in public terms you've heard the term a reverse boot campbell. we spend an enormous amount of time training veterans at the front end. not the back end helping

transition. this is a work in progress with this group but they're making grace steps and we'll hear from them in the coming months. my message on the employment lane is, as far and loud and wide as you can communicate, tell companies to hire a veteran, three, five, 50 or 100 or 10,000. whatever is within thi capacity. there's a tax credit involved. several government measures, such as d.o.l. gold card behind it, incredible support from the v.a. that includes opening up a vocational training, and i think we can get at this in 2012, optimistic that we're on a trajectory to be able to hit this hard here in the next ten months. i took more than my allotted five minutes, but i appreciate it. >> and we appreciate you. we appreciate you and that's why we're here to make sure that we as mayors can make sure we can utilize our resources on the ground to partner. that's what it's about, message

to our chamber of commerces, economic development people on the ground that these resources are there. >> the u.s. chamber of commerce, one of our great teammates -- the chamber has had 80 hires curves around the country in 2011. hired more than 7,000 veteran as walt of these. we've learned a lot. learned so much. they're going to have 300 to 400 of these in 2012. obviously, 300 to 400 hiring fairs. one in a city near you. we ask for you support with this. help communicate it. thank you. >> thank you, and one thing i forgot to mention, brian is still active duty serving in the first lady's office but still on active duty. we're having fortunate today to have as our next speaker barbara thompson. barbara is the director of the office of family policy,

children and youth in the office of the deputy under secretary of defense, office for military community and family policy. she's responsible for programs and policies that promote military families well-being and quality of life. she holds a b. nanchts early education and spanish from st. louis university and a masters in management from troy state university. barbara is here to talk with us about the services available through her office to support our military families. barbara thank you for being with us here this morning. >> thank you. good morning, everybody. thank you for the opportunity to share some of the wonderful programs that we have to support military members and their family. a little context. two-thirds, even up to 70% of our active duty force live in your communities. they do not live on the installations, like we did in the '70s. so they're embedded in your communities. attending your churches. they're shopping in your shopping malls, and so they

really are a part of your community and we want to make sure we don't see them as being isolated on an installation and not out in your community, and really volunteering and supporting your community. this as brad was saying, this has been ten years of intense deployments, separations and a lot of worry for our families. and one of the things that has changed in my world is that the use of the guard and reserve. never before have we deployed guard and reserve as we have before. and the department was really not set up for are geographically disbursed family members. in 2007 we really did change -- closer? we really did change some of our programs in how we approach not only guard and reservists not near a military installation also our active duty folk whose sometimes go back home or go

live with extended family while their loved one is deployed. so i want to share some of the resources and our thinking along those lines of how we reach and contact those people. in your dark blue folder i just kind of listed some of the programs that fall under military community and family policy. we say we cover the cradle to the grave, because we start at birth in our early childhood programs, and we also have casualty assistance, mortuary affairs in our portfolio. so we look at all aspects of support during those times. a lot of websites and a lot of information, because i think when you're informed about what is available, you can then share it with the right people in your spheres to be able to ensure that their ambassadors share this information. weren't of our greatest challenges is making sure our military members and their families know about the programs and resources that are available

to them. i think that is critical, because it could -- it's really frustrating from the policy level when we hear of issues that military families are facing, and it's like, but my goodness we offer this we have this. whether it's non-medical counselling to support military children in the public school system, or it is something as -- as rudimentary as how do you get help during a relocation and find out information about your are new community. so i hope that this will be a good reference for you all on some of the programs that we have available, but i will say that our military families, as brad was saying, one of their primary focuses is the children's education. that is one of their number one worries, because they move so often, and if you are a child who is attending stoix to nine schools during your career you know how difficult that is to transition from school to school

and state to state with all the different -- the different requirements. so we have 39 states that have signed the interstate compact, which is a -- it's an effort to help those children who are transitioning to different states not to lose credit. not to have to take their state history from three states before they graduate from high school, or how they can get into a.p. classes, or even on to the sports teams, because they miss the tryouts. while we know, we have 39 states that cover 88% of our children, we also know that the implementation has been sketchy. so this next year we're going to be working very carefully to make sure that our states school superintendents know about the interstate compact and how it will impact military children. it's not just for military children. it's for all children who transfer, but our children move so often it was really an effort to protect them. as brad was saying, employment for military spouses is a

particular interest and it falls into my portfolio. we know the financial stability of the family often hinges on the spouse's income, too, and we know that our spouses have an unemployment rate of 26% compared to their civilian counter parts and we know they're under employed by about 25%. and we know that they're more highly educated. 24% of our spouses have bachelor's degrees. so we have a program called the military spouse employment partnership, which it is, again, an effort to connect employers to a really great asset in their communities, and that's military spouses. and even though they're mobile, they have the leadership, t adaptability and just like their service members. excellent source of employment. dr. biden launched this. we've hired over 13,000 spouses

in jobs with 100 companies that are partnered with us to provide those opportunities for our spouses. so, again, our goal is to increase the numbers of businesses, especially for portable careers, or virtual careers so that pous spouses have an opportunity to have a career path and not start from scratch every time they move to a new location. i think with the reintegration piece of deployment we consider that probably the most, the most difficult phase. separation is one thing, but reintegrated into your family after being separated for a year can be very challenging. so we are working very closely with law enforcement to ensure that there's an awareness about domestic violence, about risky behaviors, and use of alcohol so that hopefully our law enforcement is attuned to the

fact that they should ask a person who they stop, have you served in oaf, oef, because it may be telling. their behave sir based on what they lived through, not that they're trying to be not a good citizen. so i think that's really important. and as brad said, access to health and especially mental health services not only for our service members but also for their families. this has been a tremendous toll on our children in particular. it has been also a toll on spouses, because they're trying to keep the homefront stabilized while their spouse is deployed, and that's challenging. and then i think we also have a -- an emphasis on predatory lending, and not -- financial entities that prey on military families, because they know they have a paycheck coming in every month, and so we're working very closely with the new consumer

federal protection board and the office of service members with mrs. petraeus to ensure that our families are safe from predatory lenders and from predatory practices. what i would like to you take away with are two things. one is that our military installations really mirror your communities. so your installation commander is basically a mayor of a town. and so whether it's churches, schools, recreation facilities, child development centers, youth centers, there is a really important connection between our community and your community, and our offices have a new initiative called community past building where we're working with the university of georgia and the university of north carolina, chapel hill to really empower our helping professionals with the skills to reach out to the communities helping professionals so that

you are aware of the needs of military families, and we are aware of receipt sources you have, and you are aware of receipt sources that we can bear in this effort. it's going to take a village, if you will, to really support these families, because they're out in your communities, and a lot of times they seek the support of their neighbors, and one of the great things about joining forces is that these random acts of kindness, whether it's from the larger city or the neighbor next door or the person you go church with, that that is really important that we all see the little acts of kindness that can really make an impact on how they can manage the stressors of the military lifestyle. and so the last thing i would like to leave with is, it's an, also an administration initiative. it's called "let's move." mrs. obama has been a spokesperson for preventing childhood obesity, and the department of defense considers

this a national security issue, because we know that 17 to 24-year-olds only 25% of our youth, are eligible to enter the military. whether it's for physical -- they're not physically fit. they're obese. they have had some problems with it's law or don't meet the education standards. but obesity is preventible. so she has an initiative calmed "let's move cities and towns" where the mayors commit to making physical activity, better nutrition and reduced screen time a focus of their administration. we are taking that model and we are developing a "let's move" installation so that our installation commander as mayors of their installation also get on the bandwagon, because we find that it's critical not only for the well-being of our families but for our future force. the army, for example, has extended their boot camp for a week, because of the physical

fitne nesaptitudes of their tro. it's more costly. more muscular skeletal injuries we we need to put ourselves in front of this issue. the other issue is health costs. if we do it and do it right we will save our health affairs and tricare management and some very significant dollars in their health costs. so i leave you that little tidbit that if you can go back to your communities and think about it i think it not only supports military children but it supports all of your future force, and your future citizens. thank you. >> thank you very, very much, ms. thompson. ms. thompson also touched on an issue for our next speaker that 1 very important, and i know as mayors