Military Community, Spouse and Family Resources - Military Times

Mission Family: Foundation gives $4.5M to programs for wounded

A wave of messages on social networking Web sites about a push to help injured service members transition to civilian communities aims to foster awareness and bolster the nonprofit groups that support these injured troops and their families.

The initiative is being propelled by the Bob Woodruff Foundation, formed by the ABC reporter, his wife, Lee, and other family members in 2007 after Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006.

Marine wife Rene Bardorf, executive director of the foundation, said Woodruff was barely out of his coma when he began talking about finding a way to give back to the military community.

As Woodruff got to know some of the wounded troops at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., he realized that military families didn’t have the resources he did.

The foundation hired Bardorf and three other military spouses because of their knowledge of the military community and of the needs of injured service members and their families.

Bardorf, whose husband recently returned from his third Iraq deployment, helped found the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund in 2004 and served as senior civilian adviser on injured support to Marine Corps leadership.

“I knew where the gaps were — when they make the transition out” of the military, she said.

Through its Web site and fed by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other media, the foundation has mounted a nationwide awareness and education campaign about the needs of injured service members returning to their communities, with a focus on those with “hidden wounds” such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Communities want to help but don’t always know how, Bardorf said.

The foundation also works with experts and other organizations at local, state and federal levels to identify and solve transition issues for wounded troops on a larger scale.

But public awareness alone doesn’t solve problems, so the foundation has put about $4.5 million into 35 organizations nationwide that help troops and their families.

These groups help with everything from individual needs, such as financial assistance and modifications of homes, to larger social issues such as homelessness and suicide.

Fundraising has become a challenge for many charities, Bardorf said. “We try to take some pressure off young groups that may only have three months of capital left,” she said.

When it comes to supporting wounded warriors and their families, Bardorf said, “yellow ribbons are nice, but that’s not all they need.”

HELP THE HELPERS

A few of the ways the Bob Woodruff Foundation is supporting nonprofit groups that focus on service members and veterans:

• Funding two residences in the Bronx through the Jericho Project for homeless veterans and those at risk of homelessness .

• Helping fund Give an Hour, which provides free professional and confidential counseling to military families.

• Helping to develop public service announcements for 900 locations in the fall, with information about challenges that service members suffering from TBI, PTSD, depression and other issues face when trying to fit into a university environment — a timely effort, given the launch of the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

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Karen Jowers is the wife of a retired service member. E-mail her at kjowers@militarytimes.com.