#031: What is philosophical meditation?Why should we and how can we practice philosophical meditation? (Self Knowledge by The School of Life)

Welcome to VetSWS Presents to Learning a Lifeline, remember don't try and see a transition grab the VetSWS Lifeline. Today we're sitting down with Alex Blake, program director veteran's upward bound of Washington DC. She received her bachelor's degree in French with a minor in statistics from the University of Vermont, and her master's degree in public health from Eastern Virginia Medical School with Old Dominion University. Let me pause for a moment right there. It says this just sounds like someone is going to work in higher ed with the medical background and statistics in French, so I can't wait to get into this story. This is going to be fantastic. As a second generation military brat helping veterans is a very personal cause for Alex. In her first year with veteran and upward bound of Washington DC, Alex served as the outreach and event coordinator establishing innovative strategies to reach more veterans across the DC metropolitan area, ensuring that they had access to tutoring and term advising opportunities. As a program director she brings both continuity and fresh vision to veterans upward bound, as well as desire to fight for visibility and recognition of the program nationally. How are you doing today Alex? I am good, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. I'm fascinating into this story of how you have that educational background and you start working with veterans. Let's jump right into it. Other than being a military brat, what was your draw to want to work with the military community in veterans? It was a little bit of just circumstances of life. I had lost a previous job that was probably what you would say more in line with my background. I happened to be on the phone with my brother who also works for veterans upward bound, but he's out in Idaho at Boise State. He was like, I know it's not public health, but I know that now two directors ago, director in DC, do you want me to see if there's anything you can do for them? And a three minute interview with that director later, and I was getting offered at least a part-time job which turned into a full-time job which turned it to now me being a judge. But you know, it's one of those things where while it's not public health, it's I think it's very much the same principles right? We're working with an underserved community and working with stakeholders to get resources to that community. So it's a lot of it's a lot of the same concepts, just a very specific subset of people. Absolutely. And it sounds like exactly the way you dreamt as a young child of how your life would go. That's fantastic though. We're lucky to have you and someone who's passionate about our community and wanting to help and give back. So the healthcare world's loss is our game, right? So let's talk about the mission of the organization. What does Veterans Upward bound do? Veterans Upward bound is a grant-funded program currently through the Department of Ed. We work primarily with first-generation low-income veterans and help them with their post-secondary education journey. So whether that's a two-year degree or a four-year degree, or like a certificate or trade school, any sort of learning opportunity, we want to help our veterans get there and be successful when they do get there, right? Because so many people come to us and they're like, we've started, I've started this journey, but I just didn't have the support and the resources and you know, I took a couple of classes and then stopped their, you know, flunked out, whatever it is, or they haven't even started at all because they don't know where to start. Right, right. So when you and I first talked about coming on the show, I was still waiting for final word, whether or not funding was even going to happen here in 2026. So you're telling me the 2026 were good, right? So everything is still very sadly up in the air. So we were funded for the 2526 year. A lot of us, like my program, our grant technically goes to 2627. Things are looking tentatively okay at the moment. However, you know, we get a new notice every day about something, like right now there's plans with the talks of getting of moving us from the Department of Ed to the Department of Labor. So there's just a lot of interesting things always happening in the mix, but we are, so we are part of the trail programs, which all work for this first generation low income demographic. And we are fighting every day to make sure that we stay here and are continuing to able, continuing to be able to help. Right. Because there is a regular upward, it's upward bound. Yeah, so there's traditional upward bound, which is basically the same thing, but it's just working with like high schoolers trying to go to college. And then a couple of other programs as well. So if someone wants to use this program, how do they go about getting involved? The easiest thing to do is probably just Google your location and veterans upward bound. So there are 60, 60 plus programs across the country, including Puerto Rico. And we all kind of have our own area. So honestly, even if you found one that's not your area, we are all connected to each other. So we would be able to help you find the one that's closest to you that would be able to help you. There's a whole directory. We are the national association of veterans upward bound. If you Google that, we have a whole directory of all the programs as well. And then along those lines, so let's say if you find the local one, it's at one school, they don't just service that school, they service the area. Correct. So we are we are all hosted at an institution of higher education, whether that's a university community college or even like a local education nonprofit. We're hosted there, but our job is not to recruit for that school, right? Because like I'm at Catholic University, which is a great school, but that's a private four-year institution, and that's not the right choice for every veteran. Especially because we have a lot of veterans who are looking more at the the trade school certificate route because they just want the credibility to go along with the capability that they already have from their time and service. Absolutely. And Catholic spending guest on this show, a fantastic institution, and I think the way they worded it was the best kept secret. It was one of those colleges that, you know, I personally never heard of, but fascinated by what they're doing and the amazing veteran program they have there. So what are the restrictions to use that the program? Like I said, so it's geared towards that first generation low income demographic. So we want to see at least one of those qualifications. So either your parents didn't go to college or gain your low income, and that's based on taxable income. So all of your military benefit pay and stuff like that, that does not count for that. As well as we look for some sort of academic need. Like you've been out of school for a while. You're at risk of failure. That sort of thing. And the big thing is that you don't already have a degree. Or should I say you don't already have a bachelor's degree, right? If you have if you have an associate's and you're looking for that bachelor's, we would help with that. But usually if you're beyond that already, it would have to be some sort of extremely accentuating circumstance. This is really for you haven't taken that step yet. Okay. Okay. So that makes sense. It gets you through your undergraduate work. Okay. Like how's the once you apply, you get accepted, what's that process? What's that look like? Does it does it provide total funding? Does it provide partial funding, top up funding? Are the requirements they have to maintain, et cetera? Yeah. So our program is completely free for the veterans. But what we do is at least at my program specifically how we operate is you fill out our application. Then you come in for your first appointment with us and we go over what you're looking for. We ask extensively about about your benefits. Have you used them? Do you still have any? I know our demographic tends to skew a little bit older. So we have a lot of veterans who who already passed their time on their benefits. It's not even that they did they they use them all. It's that they missed the chance to use them. So we do a lot of helping them navigate their benefits. And then if they don't have any, we look at, you know, how can we find you other funding sources, that sort of thing. We are trying to make sure we're implementing for specialty programs. Like our program gives out laptops, but we're trying to make sure that it's your an active participant in our program. We want to help you, but you don't get to just walk away with everything without doing the work yourself. Makes sense. Yeah. You don't want people just come in and get the couple of benefits and taking off and you're sitting there out and there's no results from it. Yeah. Because we truly want to be helping, but part of helping you is you helping yourself, I think. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's important for the veteran community to remember is a hand up on a handout. Exactly. I want to I want to help people. I want to help them move forward and everything, but I'm not going to do the work for you. And you know, that's that's one key piece. I think we always need to keep in mind is you still got to do the work, especially with your transition. You know, it's all about, you know, what you want to achieve and where you want to go. Now, do you guys have any like partnerships or anything like that that you specifically work as far as an organization? Absolutely. So one of our big ones is a nonprofit out of Richmond, Virginia, called tech for troops, and they provide laptops for military veterans, dependents. So we work with them to get laptops, and then we are able to provide them at no cost to the veteran. But again, that's one of those you got to show up to get it. But then within that there, they come up about once a quarter and do computer workshops with us. So because we have we again, we have some veterans who they need the help starting from turning it on. So we try to provide all of that education as well because so much of life is on a computer these days. We also work a lot with local veteran organizations in DC, the mayor's office of veterans affairs, the vet center, as well as there's a couple of like transitional housing places that we work with. Friendship place, veterans on the rise. We really try to help the veterans there and we have good partnerships with them. And is that pretty standard for all the different chapters, you know, to work locally with? From what I understand, there's a lot of them that do have these relationships. I know I've heard some directors talk about they get a lot of their referrals from their local VR&E counselors and things like that. So there's definitely a lot of good talk back and forth between veteran programs. Fantastic. It takes for troops is another alumni of our show. Just a fantastic organization. You remind me I got a whole stack of laptops here. I'm supposed to be sending them and I think that's over a year now. So thanks for the reminder. I got to get on that. Mark will be happy to hear that. Oh yeah. All right. So as we get ready to close this out, two things I want you to address if you will. One is make the quick argument to why this program needs to continue. And then two, how can people reach out to you connect with you connect with the program? So I would say the reason our program is important is we have shown that we are helping veterans, right? We, you know, in addition to being grant-funded and having to show the metrics, we have seen increased numbers of veterans able to go to school, veterans succeeding in school, getting their degrees, getting their certificates, whatever program they choose, you know, we are showing success. And I think it's also such a big motivator for our veterans, right? We're giving them more community. Like when we run workshops, just seeing them get in a room together and then being able to just sit and talk in a place where they, even if they don't truly know somebody, they know them, right? They're comfortable. They are able to be themselves. So I think we're providing, we're providing that community and we're providing them the resources to truly be successful and we're showing that. And as far as getting in touch, with any program, you can go to the Navvab website that's national association for veterans upward bound that's navub.org. And there's a list of all of the programs and their directors and websites. As far as my program specifically, we are vub.calik.edu. And if you also just search veterans upward bound DC, we're on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. All the socials, all right? All the places. Well, fantastic. I agree with you. I think it's a fantastic program and a great way for people to get that first step of it higher education out of the way. So hopefully the funding will continue. You guys continue to make this impact. I want to thank Alex for joining us today on Vettus West and behalf of the entire Vettus West family. We'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. 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