theville ranlgthe villages retirement community. >> to watch video of the candidates events in florida, see what they've said on issues important to you and read the latest from the candidates, political reporters and people like you from social media sites at c-span.org/campaign2012. the u.s. conference of mayors recently held their 80th winter meeting in washington, d.c. and one session examined ways to help military personnel returning from war and families transition back into their communities and find employment. among the groups of speakers during this one-hour discussion is the white house's joining forces initiatives director captain brad cooper. >> good morning. welcome to the u.s. mayor's task force on military relations. i know we just broke from our

plenary session so hopefully people will be coming in and out. i'm mayor joy cooper. i'm one of the co-chairs of this task force. we are here today to address some very critical issues concerning our communities and our partners with our veterans as well as all the agencies with our federal government and how we can bring resources to our returning veterans. we often get involved with brac and military instam lagss with returning vets but the climate today we understand on the grass roots level that the men and women returning back home will need resources, will be looking for jobs and have a different type of critical needs that we hopefully can partner with social services, jobs, and making sure their transition back home goes smoothly. we are very, very lucky today, fortunate to have a

distinguished group of speakers from the white house. the department of defense and the justice for veterans who will discuss various group of services that they have been working on to assist military families, men and women, with job training, job placement, and a number of supported services for veteran treatment courts. i want to welcome you all. i also want to welcome my colleague of mayors and really excited about not just talking about bricks and mortar and infi inf infrastructure today but our veterans and citizens. i want to introduce my co-chair. say a few words, if you would. >> i'm mayor of sump ter, south carolina, which in turn is home to air force central command and army central command. so what we're talking at today is something that is extremely important to me as it is to any

mayor who has a military facility because at the end of the day i the people that are our neighbors that we worry so much about and appreciate so much. our first speaker this morning is captain brad cooper. he is executive director of joining force which is a broad outreach effort by the white house, office of first lady michelle obama to assist military men and women and their families. brad is a graduate of the united states military academy. he finished, i believe it says in '89. i thought he was 20 years old when i looked at him but he's a little older than that. i think when you look at brad's history as an officer in the navy, it emphasizes that we're doing today. we explained to me that we have six combat areas in the world or regions. in his career he served in every one of them.

if you look at the places we has served and in the interest of time i'm not going to read all of 24e78 although i probably should because it really emphasize what's we try to do as mayors when we have military presence in our community, whether it's a base, veterans, retirees, whatever. he started in desert shield and desert storm and has actually served in afghanistan more than once. he's had an deployment -- he's been all over the world and in every hot spot that our military and our country has had since he's been serving. and, brad, we're proud to have you you today because of your service and we're also very interested in hearing what you have to say about the first lady's program and how we can participate. >> thank you, so much, mr. mayor and, ma'am, thank you and the group. appreciate you joining today.

thank you for the kind words. one small clarification. the consistent with my core belief, i went to the naval academy, not the united states military academy. important because after ten years of football wins this is something you have to really bring to attention at any me meeting in any group. the good thing is about the streak, when they go on, they're good. but when they stop, it's a tough year. thank you very much, sir. i appreciate it. and a citadel graduate yourself, we appreciate it. i have the great pref los angeles -- privilege of working with the first lady for a few months and joe biden campaign. this their effort you have teen seen probably in public and more private venues to recognize, honor, and really support our nation's veterans service members and their families and give them the support we believe they have earned and most people

believe they have concerned it after ten years of war. we're doing it such a way to energize action above and beyond that which is already going on with the federal government. so this is really an engagement effort with the private sector. this is from individualing, businesses, communities, faith-based institutions and non-profits and asking each of them to honor and recognize and support the 1% of americans who have served and their families over the last ten years. not well-known throughout the country, that's the case, but literally is actually less than 1% who have carried this fight, if you will, for ten years. the challenges of being at war for ten years. several months ago he got a

medal or a army ranger, who earned on his seventh deployment. he also has four kids. you can appreciate the fact that seven deployments means seven deployments for him and seven deployments for his family. really unprecedented ask. in the last couple of months we had another army soldier killed on his 14th deployment. almost incomprehensible that we would have soldiers, marines, air men, and folks from the navy deployed that often. that's where we are. that's where we are. although that we've begun or out of iraq. we've begun the trajectory to come out of afghanistan. but we're not out yet. if you saw the news today, six americans killed yesterday in afghanistan. of course i think we're going to see that's going to continue. so now the question then becomes, what can we do as a country, to help this group and support them and those who are

getting so much and so very rarely ask for a whole lot in return. and so the first lady and dr. biden rolled out joining forces to give this support in a more public way. and really rally the country to action and they did this back in april of last year. we're only about nine months into this. we're working down four lanes. public -- i'd like to talk briefly about each of them. public awareness, employment, education, and wellness and particularly mental health. call into action the country to do something, to step up and do something and do what you do best in your communities to help serve this population. it's also manifested in major league baseball outreach and inviting the first lady and dr. biden to join with them to game

one of the world series where they celebrated veterans of military families. it was nascar back in the fall. a great event. 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 team with the ncaa, great organization, who's committed to doing 600 special things for military fam ilys in 2012 alone. kicked off a nice public service announcement and campaign. and for those of you who own any tweens, the first lady appeared on "i carly" 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 part of the structure, with more than 190 million saying that ten years of war has no personal impact on them, a lot of the communication needs to be rou rudimentary and fundamental. these are the realis the of mom and dad going off to war. pub bluklic awareness. i think we'll see more and more of those in the months to come. i'll talk about employment attend. but education, we're working down two lanes. first to take working with organizations called the national math science initiative which i will refer to as a.p. on steroids. it's the most advanced a.p. courses in the country. in institutionalizing those in public schools that have a large military population and not known to most, most public schools -- well, most military children go to a public school that is not a dod school.

this is an effort to submit for the long term some advanced education opportunities. as we do that, we're also looking to cement opportunities that are sustainable for the long haul in terms of educating the nation's future teachers. so we've been 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 and 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 schoolteacher in hospital kinsville, kentucky, near ft. campbell, and you have a couple of young kids falling asleep and you're teaching a sixth grade class and they're falling asleep it would be helpful for you to have an understand that, hey, this young kitd's parent is fro east afghanistan. mom or dad is stressed. been gone for eight or nine months.

i think human level can appreciate the challenge there's and we want our future teachers to have that perspective. great news, they've stepped up in great ways led by prestigious institutions, harvard among them. and in the world of wellness or behavioral health working on two pieces. one -- and they're fairly broad. this isn't a day that goes by that we don't read in the newspaper about ptsd and tdbi. signature wounds of the war although they are hardly new issues. these same issues have been around for every war. in the last two weeks we've taken two specific steps to help address this. the first of which is we believe firmly because this population is young. every one who has fought in these wars, maybe with the exception of me, was in their 20s and 30s when they did it. so they're around for 50 or 60 more years. this is long term. we've got to think long term for

this and along those lines we invested a significant amount of time with all of the nation's medical colleges. we asked them to come together with one commitment, which is to train the nation's future physicians and understanding ptsd and tbi and military culture competency, the reason being more than half of veterans in this country do not seek medical care within the va or dod systems so 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, need to some some understanding that there is an tremendous impact of this growing population. great news, they stepped up and did it. big announcement in richmond where 130 medical colleges came together and said, thought, this was an important endeavor and we'll train the nation's future physicians in this, which is great. the other part -- that's the future. also working with 30 medical

associations around the country getting them -- asking them to fundamentali itly to do the sam thing and more of that now context. and 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 to be the expert but to have some knowledge based on the family population in the country and we believe is a must and we'll see some announcements about that here in the coming weeks. the last thing i would like to talk about which i think is an area where each of you could have an impact and you could essentially do it today is in the world of employment. you may or may not know that young veteran and unemployment in particular for young veterans is significantly higher than national average. comes as a shock to many people.

why is that? number one reason is the nation lost 8 million jobs. that's -- young veterans were hit particularly hard. there are some other pieces that go with that, including what has historically not been much of a need to have to translate those great skill use learned on the battle field of eastern afghanistan into civilian speak, but with fewer and fewer leaders in our institutions having been veterans themselves, it's important that young veterans be able to translate those great experiences into pieces, into siville jsi v siville civilian speak so employers the understand it. i use myself. three great things i do well are i drive warships, fire tomahawk missiles and hunt submarines. there's not great need for that in the private sector these days but there probably is some need in managing thousands of people and a budget and material in the billions of dollars.

that's where our young people need to seize opportunities and translate those skills. the good news -- that's one piece. and i'll talk about more good news in a second. so we really embarked in a significant effort to address this issues and 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. he asked the first lady and dr. biden to lead this effort, engagement with communities and particularly with businesses both big and small. the great news is, companies have stepped up left and right and just under our umbrella, enormous country, we've had about 1500 companies already hire more than 35,000 veterans and spouses in just five months so we're on an incredible trajectory. these same couldn't companies have committed to hire 135,000

over the next two years, veterans and spouses. good news. it's a dot in this country. it's nothing. you can see what the a small gr has done. our message is, let's continue to address this by spreading the news and the most impactful way where folks can make a difference clearly is 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, if you're a veteran and you're hiring veterans, you get it. you understand the type and quality of person you're getting. for those who have not been in a veteran hiring space. i'll use a great sponsor here. seimens last year said, we'll hire 300 veterans this year. eight weeks later they did it. they loved the people they hired and said, well, let's go to 450. eight weeks later they did it

again. geez, we really love the quality of the people that we're getting. this is not -- this is not a prop place we targeted but they're outstanding folks. we'll go to 600. that was all an eight-month period. story. replicate that times 29,000 and you can see the possibility of really helping the younger population in a very short period of time. so my ask of the group is, go back to 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 perp that you get, who, by the way, on the veteran side, is already a graduate of the world's greatest training institution origin, the united states military, is a positive at the company level and it's good for the bottom line. we've emphasized that. it's one thing to hire a veteran because it's patriotic, that's good, but it's a whole other

thing to do it because it makes good business sense and it's 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. giants in the country to help this out and we've had policies in place to help you. let me talk about the policies first. on november 21st, the president signed a law authorizing tax credits for hiring unemployed veterans, up to $5600. so we're only -- 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 in -- on main street.

so hire a veteran, do it because it makes good sense for your company. by the way, get a tax credit for it up to if you do hire one of the nation's wounded warriors, that tax credit is up to $10,000. so there's financial incentive to do it as well. please, spread that word. use 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 of doing it. the vote from that was a 520-0 vite from a bicameral perspective of 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 sector in a meaningful way and put him or her at the top of the queue 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 to match individual 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.t. 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. a great public-private outreach, private sector organization called simply hired scoops all the veterans hiring portals around country, pro bono and deposited 500,000 jobs, where companies indicated a 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 mosaic. as you can all appreciate, anyone who serves appreciates, when a service member leaves, 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 reverse boot camp. 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 the 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 hiring curves around the country in 2011. hired more than 7,000 veteran as a result of these. we've learned a lot. learned so much. they're going to have 300 to 400 hiring fairs. one of them will be 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 very 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 department 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.a. in 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. i just want to give you a little bit of a 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 our guard and reservists as we have in the oif. and the infrastructure and department was really not set up for our geographically dispersed 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 and funeral honors 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 centers to be able to make sure 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 counseling 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 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. if you're a child who is attending six 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 3at