Hello, I’m Aaron Preston. I’m A 17 year old Civics student at SBRHS. My group and I have been researching awareness for veterans and their benefits that they receive. We’ve been advocating for veterans for our State required showcase at the end of the year where we show the steps we take to bring awareness for veterans in need and to support them.
The amount of veterans that are suffering due to the improper steps taken by those in charge of getting these veterans their deserved privileges after serving their country is insurmountable, therefore something has to and must be done about this for veterans to be able to live comfortably after serving their country for years or decades. For most or all of us we have some family members in the Army. We don’t want to see them come out and suffer like many of these people do. If we don’t want this for our family, why wouldn’t we help out other families so we can decline these rates and give more people a chance to live better and more freely.
Veterans serve their country and fight for the majority of their lives. For most they don’t have a college degree and expect to be able to be financially stable when getting discharged and becoming a veteran and also have to provide for their family. But, for most they don’t come out able to get necessities to live and a lot of times end up in bad poverty such as homelessness and even worse. A lot commit suicide because they can’t provide for themselves, which could be from getting injured and not being able to work or just not having qualifications to get jobs even though they served our countries for sometimes decades. Most people on the street walk by these men struggling to find their next meal and sometimes they never get it.
Veterans should be able to live without having to worry, because it’s basically retirement but they don’t make enough when they’re actively serving to save enough for when they come out. Which when they cope veterans sometimes get into drug abuse and other things. This pushes them farther down the rabbit hole. And a very high chance for them not to recover. According to the Census Bureau, there are 277,442 veterans that reside in Massachusetts. Around 6.1% of veterans live in poverty; 21.4% of the veterans also have a service connected disability from when they served, which is around 59,000 veterans just in Massachusetts alone. Steps can be taken to stop this.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) takes many steps to address these problems. The VFW is a nonprofit veterans service organization of eligible veterans and military service members from the active, guard and reserve forces. Their goal is to give extra benefits that can help veterans live and even get an education. For example, in 2008 the VFW won a huge case passing the “GI Bill,” which gives expanded educational benefits to America’s active duty service members and members of the guard and reserves, fighting in Iraq. The VFW fought long and hard for the rights of the veterans. The GI Bill was just a start as they’ve passed a few more bills in their existence to help as much as they can. But, we believe that more can be done about this.
We believe more action can be taken which we’ll continue to do to ensure the benefits for Veterans can be as high as we can get them for them to have a weight off their shoulders and can enjoy their life with their families without having to worry about financial problems in the future. We want everyone to be involved, and everyone can do their part just by stopping and even donating a dollar to someone can really help a lot and make someone’s day by something so small.
