Wooden Boats for Veterans
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VALIANT & CLOVER
Wooden Boats For Veterans (WBFV) is a not-for-profit private foundation, founded to enrich veterans’ lives by providing waterborne activities-based experiences that result in:
WBFV has a variety of programs focused on wooden boat restoration and sail training that are designed to give all veterans opportunities to achieve greater prosperity and happiness in work and life. These programs give participating veterans a venue to reinforce teamwork and goal-oriented skills. Personalized learning experiences ensure that participants strengthen self-confidence and productive habits of mind and tap into their latent capacity for a rigorous workplace.
Any endeavor must have a high purpose to bring satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment and community. By themselves, restoring wooden boats and learning to sail them are worthy pursuits, but to be truly life-affirming WBFV engages veterans to sail wooden boats to California’s port-cities to provide health care and benefits to veterans living “outside the net” of Veterans Administration. The innovation for WBFV is the melding of the wooden sailboats with this mission in order to intensify the healing powers of the sea.
- Skill-set restructuring
- Increasing job performance
- Developing successful employees and community leaders
WBFV has a variety of programs focused on wooden boat restoration and sail training that are designed to give all veterans opportunities to achieve greater prosperity and happiness in work and life. These programs give participating veterans a venue to reinforce teamwork and goal-oriented skills. Personalized learning experiences ensure that participants strengthen self-confidence and productive habits of mind and tap into their latent capacity for a rigorous workplace.
Any endeavor must have a high purpose to bring satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment and community. By themselves, restoring wooden boats and learning to sail them are worthy pursuits, but to be truly life-affirming WBFV engages veterans to sail wooden boats to California’s port-cities to provide health care and benefits to veterans living “outside the net” of Veterans Administration. The innovation for WBFV is the melding of the wooden sailboats with this mission in order to intensify the healing powers of the sea.
The issues veterans face are real and staggering:
Behind these troubling statistics, unemployment is a major factor that often goes unreported (See Appendix A). In California, over 50,000 employees are unemployed. That figure has remained essentially flat for the last ten years, despite California’ economic expansion leading to lowering unemployment rates for non-veterans in the same period.
The majority of these veterans are under 39 years of age, a demographic with significant differences in outlook towards career satisfaction than in other generations. As shown in the graphic below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Veterans living along the east bay and Delta have both the highest concentrations of veterans and rates of reported unemployment in the state.[1]
Fully half or 25,000 unemployed veterans live in the East Bay and the Delta waterways; 14,000 in Solano County alone
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2014/11/10/where-veterans-live/#2c4f88d37484
- 20 Veterans commit suicide every day
- Veterans have 21% higher suicide risk vs. non-veterans; and over twice as high for women veterans
- 73% of Veterans who committed suicide were NOT government provided health or employment services
Behind these troubling statistics, unemployment is a major factor that often goes unreported (See Appendix A). In California, over 50,000 employees are unemployed. That figure has remained essentially flat for the last ten years, despite California’ economic expansion leading to lowering unemployment rates for non-veterans in the same period.
The majority of these veterans are under 39 years of age, a demographic with significant differences in outlook towards career satisfaction than in other generations. As shown in the graphic below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Veterans living along the east bay and Delta have both the highest concentrations of veterans and rates of reported unemployment in the state.[1]
Fully half or 25,000 unemployed veterans live in the East Bay and the Delta waterways; 14,000 in Solano County alone
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2014/11/10/where-veterans-live/#2c4f88d37484