Episode 75 Transcription

Welcome to episode 75 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversation with PsychArmor trusted partners and educational experts. My name is Duane France and each week I'll be having conversations with podcasts guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans, and their families. You can find the show on your podcast player of choice or by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission, our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors who also believe that education changes lives. This show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. 

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Besa Pinchotti, Executive Director of The National Military Family Association, an organization that provides advocacy and supportive programming for military families for over 50 years. As executive director, Besa brings leadership to NMFA along with her personal experience as a military spouse to this incredible team. Besa is an award-winning journalist and marketer whose passion for our military began during her time as a reporter and television news anchor. You can find out more about Besa by checking out her bio in our show notes. So let's get into my conversation with her and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points. 

DUANE: So Besa, as a military spouse yourself, I'm sure that the mission of the National Military Family Association is very personal to you. I'd like to hear about your background and what brought you to the work that you're doing within NMFA.

BESA:Absolutely. So interestingly, I am not someone who grew up as part of our military community. I wasn't very connected to the military. My dad is an immigrant from Kosovo. So what I knew of the military and his Veteran status is that he was forced to serve in the military he didn't believe in, which is what happened in the former Yugoslavia. But then when the war happened in Kosovo, we gained a true appreciation for our military because of what the US military did for our family back in Kosovo. I was a reporter, at the time I was working in Austin and then I also ended up at another place in Texas. I worked in North Carolina and I found myself in Eastern North Carolina at the beginning of the Iraq War. Marine town.

I was right around Camp Lejeune. And so I was there reporting on the deployments, the casualties to families whose loved one didn't come home. It was a really intense, difficult time for our military community. And I got to know so many of the families, some of whom I still keep in touch with to this day.

And of course I did what happens when you move to military community? And I met a guy and everyone said don't marry a Marine and I didn't listen. So I married him and he was medically retired. He had a spinal injury and got out and we retired from the military. And anyone who's done military service for a while and then gets out, it is quite the experience that we call it the transition.

And I definitely know why, because you don't know what you're doing with your life. You don't know what career you're gonna have. We had one kid at the time and we have three now and I decided to go work in tech. Because it was family friendly. And that's what I was looking for after leaving journalism, which is sometimes tough on the family and the military, which can also be really tough on the family.

I said, let's do tech. And then I did that for five years. And as a lot of tech firms do, they sent me on a sabbatical and that sabbatical was supposed to re-energize me and get me ready for the next big thing. And I just came back feeling like I needed a whole lot more meaning and I wanted to work somewhere that I really cared about that was doing important work. And that's how I ended up at National Military Family Association. It's been over eight years now that I've been here, it's the longest I've ever been at any job because it definitely doesn't feel like a job. It feels like a family. And maybe that's, I know people say that a lot, but we literally have family in the name. It truly feels like a family. It's something that I care about. There's always so much work to be done. And I just, I felt inspired from day one by what the team was doing. And I still feel that way to this day.

[00:02:55] duane---he---him---his-_132_06-06-2022_160704: No. That's very interesting. I imagine, as a reporter in those early days of reporting in families in Camp Lejeune, that you're talking about, it may be some about some trivial stuff like happy fun days or things like that, but some really important, meaningful, like you're sharing very personal stories of military families and often some of their hardest days. And then to go from that, and then as you said, not working in that. I would imagine that coming back to that and now advocating for those families really gives you a sense of maybe coming full circle.

BESA: It really does feel that way. When you're a reporter, there's always a couple stories that stick out in your mind and they're just really important to you for one reason or another. And there are two military families that are definitely drivers of mine for the work that we do. One of them is it's a military spouse in particular, her name's Janina Bitz, and she was a mother of four. And in the very first days of the war in Iraq, her husband was killed in action. I went to her house with all of the other reporters. It's a really it's a horrible part of the job. But you just never know because sometimes people do wanna talk. She didn't. And I said, okay, thank you. I'm so sorry for your loss. Here's my card. And I left, but as I was leaving, I saw the ugliest side of reporting that I'd seen, which was a reporter climbing the wall of her house to get a picture of her and her kids from a window. And this was the day she found out that her husband was killed. I got to know her over the years because she did reach out to me. She called me, she kept my card and I talked to her all the time. In fact, I just talked to her online over Memorial Day and it's been decades at this point. But she was the one who went and did something about that. And it was her and others who got the laws changed to where the media was not alerted the day, the minute that someone was killed in action, but there was that time where families were notified.

So it was her story that definitely brought that passion to me to make a difference. But then also there's a man named Jerry Ensminger and if you've heard about the water contamination story on Camp Lejeune, so many people suffered so many diseases and deaths from that water contamination, including his daughter Janie. And he was advocating for first, the government to take responsibility. And then second to support all of the people in all of the things that had happened to them in their lives since that. I mean his own daughter died. And that's another thing that decades later, we're still advocating for families around the country for that water contamination and the support that they're still not receiving in some states. And he's another one that I talked to just recently because he heard me talking about this issue on the radio on NPR and he called me and he said, you missed this and you missed that and you didn't mention this. And I just, I love those people, those advocates that I didn't even really recognize as advocates at the time.

But now here at National Military Family Association, I look back and I say they were so inspiring and that's exactly what they were and are. And that is a huge part of what National Military Family Association is.

DUANE: And really as a way to amplify their voices, as you mentioned. And, prior to my previous role, I was a mental health professional, and I had several Lejeune Marines that served at Camp Lejeune and had gotten the cancer and things like that. And we were working through a lot of that many of the years ofdenial and betrayal and things like that. And really what National Military Family Association does it takes those passionate people, but also amplifies their voices and plugs them into a national network, supports them through a number of different programs such as military spouse, scholarship program, operation purple programs. What can you tell us about some of the programs that National Military Family Association provides?

BESA: I'm gonna start with advocacy because like you said, that's a huge part of who we are and what we do and amplifying the voices. And I wanna tell you that NMFA started with a group of women sitting around their kitchen table. It was 1969. It was during the Vietnam War. And they were upset because their friends who had lost a service member who was killed in Vietnam were not being taken care of. They were basically left out hung out to dry, with no support. And that group of military spouses marched up to the capital. They went door to door. Those who are a member have told us, they put on their white gloves, cuz that's what you did at the time. And they marched door to door and that is how the survivor benefit plan was passed.

So those are the earliest days of NMFA. And that is still what we do right now. The most recent things that we've been focusing on are the basic needs allowance, which was passed recently. And that is because of what we were seeing with food insecurity in military families, which is a huge problem right now. There are so many different things that we advocate for when it comes to healthcare.

I know that we're talking to right now about mental health and that's your background and it's been a really tough time for all Americans dealing with the pandemic. But then you add these extra stressors that military families have, and they really need that access, whether it's virtual care, whether it's in person and when you're moving constantly, it becomes an even greater barrier.

So we do a lot of work in advocating for healthcare and other benefits, basically anything that comes up that could be a benefit or a way that we can best support military families. National Military Family Association is that connection to Capitol hill, to D O D, to the service branches. And we've been working with them for more than 50 years.

DUANE: And I think that's a very critical thing that people aren't really familiar with is obviously if you think we're supporting military families, we're taking care of the immediate needs, as you mentioned, the food instability, but that idea advocating for long term change.

Yeah, we can put food on the table now, or we can provide some immediate support, but really to make meaningful change it takes long term efforts. Again, like you said, working with Congress or working with some of the other federal agencies.

BESA: It does. And when we think about what we do at National Military Family Association, we try to do that thing right now. What can we do for a family that has a need right now? And that is some of those other programs that I'll talk about. But then we also say, what can we do to fix this? So that families  a decade, two decades from now, aren't dealing with this specific issue.

So we have, we just kicked off camp season and every season we send thousands to hundreds depends on the year and the locations of military kids to camps all around the country. This year, it's about a thousand kids at camps and they are absolutely free for military kids to go and spend a week where they disconnect from the stressors of everyday life.

They disconnect from their phones and they hang out in nature with kids who understand what they're going through. Military kids end up going to between seven and nine schools on average between kindergarten and high school graduation. That is a lot. And they're constantly meeting new friends and having to explain themselves.

And the great thing about camp is that they don't have to explain themselves because everyone there gets it and it is such a positive and nurturing experience. They actually celebrate being military kids. It's amazing. So those are going on right now. There's one this week in Ohio, for example, that we had a couple team members attending and they've been sending pictures and stories about them.

And we also have family retreats and healing adventures, which are similar, but they involve the whole family. So a family retreat is usually for a family who is dealing with a deployment that's coming up or they're coming off of a deployment and trying to reconnect. And then the healing adventures are retreats, but for wounded ill or injured families. And last thing, which is probably the newest is our operation purple virtual programming. So it's called operation purple at home. And we originally started that because of COVID, but we found out that military families need that for a lot of different reasons. Maybe they're overseas, maybe they're PCSing.

So they're moving across the country. We had a kid call in for virtual camp last year, and you could see his suitcases and his dog in the crate behind them. And they were physically driving across the country and he was able to connect with other kids. We were expecting about 500 kids to do that this summer.

DUANE: And I think that's something that again, we're talking about mental health, but peer support, connecting individuals to other individuals who understand their unique experiences. And as you said, and we started talking before my own children, five different elementary schools, and I think that's really a challenge for many of them, even if they are in a military community where they're surrounded by that, but to be able to be taken away from whatever stresses that's incredibly supportive. Just to help them understand that I'm not alone in this.

BESA: It really is. You can get mental healthcare. And a lot of military kids or families need it, but we all know and the research shows that there are other things that are really important in that equation. And one of them is connection. And it's what you're talking about. The way that those kids are able to connect with each other at camp.

But the other is that the outdoors are really healing and you have kids. I have kids. If I can get them off of their computers and their phones to actually do a thing and connect, I think it's just so powerful. So it's a combination of all of those things. And we also, at our operation purple programs have MFLC, which are military family life counselors, and they are there with no agenda, but to observe and be available. And so they're there throughout the week of camp. And a lot of times they notice things or one of the kids wants to talk to them about something. So there's a trusted grown up available to have a conversation with them at the time, and also potentially direct them and their families to the support they might need.

DUANE: And as you're talking about camps, it sounds like we're talking about littler ones. So maybe, elementary, middle school age, but also recently, NMFA has partnered with an organization that's really supporting military teens, there's another set of challenging experience that military teens and young adults have.

BESA: Yes. So generally camp is ages 7 to 15 and yes, there are some exceptions. And we were noticing that the 15 year olds, maybe wanted something more. But bloom empowering the military, teen is the whole name. They are an incredible group of teens who got together and just said, we really need to connect with each other more. We've moved. I know you, you know me, we haven't seen each other in four duty stations. What can we do about it? So they built a community and meet online, they share content. And when I say share content, they create the coolest things. There are poems, there are paintings, they're so artistic. And we started working with them on some surveys because we wanted to know what was really happening in the lives of military teens.

We knew anecdotally that teens might be having a hard time. We were seeing it in our own homes, but we wanted to see if that was really the case. And the percentage of teens who said that their mental wellbeing was low, was terrible. Also, the number that had admitted to thinking of self-harm. There were a lot of alarming numbers and I'd love to direct your audience to our website, which is militaryfamily.org, because we have a full report. If you wanna read more about some of these numbers and what's going on with military teens, we brought bloom. To NMFA. So they're living with us now.

Their founders are in college. And the reason for that is because we saw that there was a huge need and we wanted to make sure that bloom didn't go away just because the founders got busy with their coursework. So we're growing the teen community and the teens are also working with us to create teen specific programming and some of that is camp based. And we're starting that later this year, some of it is virtual. And they're telling us because we don't know what they want or what they need. Some of the things that they talk about on the way that they connect with each other, On, I don't know, a discord server.

I literally asked my teen. I'm like, first of all, what is this? And she laughed at me. And then I said, is this really how you guys hang out? And she said, yes. So they know, and we don't wanna tell them, we want them to tell us. So we're working with those teens to make sure that their voices are heard.

DUANE: And really even now we don't understand the multi-generational impact of what the global war on terror has done. So from 2001 until it's just recently, so a 20 year, this is cross-generational that kids born at the beginning of the global war on terror are the youngest Veterans of the global war on terror, but also the children, the teens you're talking about were born in 2005, 2007.And so now they've experienced the latter half of the global on terror. And we're really not gonna understand the cross-generational impact of this for a long time. 

BESA: You're right. And what we do know is that those kids are the kids who join the military in the future. A huge percentage of those surveyed ee did the survey two years in a row one year, it was 60% the next year, it was 42% who said that they want to and plan to serve in our military. Whether it's that number or this number, it was a point in time when we asked the question. It's a lot. It's a huge percentage. And then 18% said that they were planning to join the military right after they graduated high school. So we're not even talking about military family members. We're talking about actual service members and our fighting force of the future. So there is a reason to care whether your heart is with the teens or your heart is with our country this is absolutely a group of people that we need to be paying really close attention to.

DUANE: Oh, I absolutely agree. As a father of two young adults who were in kindergarten and first grade when I started to deploy, but also just increasing the military as a multi-generational occupation. Besa, I absolutely appreciate you coming on the show today.

You've mentioned a little bit of where people can find NMFA on the web, but can you give us a good way for people to find out more about the programs that you provide?

BESA:Yes, our website is www.militaryfamily.org. You can also follow us on all the social media channels, and that's the quickest way to know when camp applications open when our scholarship applications open. We didn't talk much about that, but we do provide scholarships for military spouses. Who are either going for a degree or maybe a license or a certification also funding for military spouse, entrepreneurs. Starting in the pandemic, we gave out more than 5 million of childcare fee relief, and that is through our partners at army emergency relief, air force aid society and we're now working through ways to support those going to school with not only tuition assistance, but also childcare fee relief, because you really need to have that to be able to go to school.

And,we can't do any of this without our incredible partners. I have to mention Wounded Warrior Project who has made sure that we've been able to do operation purple camp year after year after year. We absolutely cannot do it alone. Our tagline is together we're stronger and we believe it and we live it every day.

DUANE: Absolutely. You can't do this work without a network. And I am absolutely gonna make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. Thanks for coming on the show today.

BESA: Thanks so much for having us. 

Once again, this show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations, you can find out more about what they're doing at www.psycharmor.org. 

It's always great to talk to guests who have passion to support those who served in those who care for them. And today's conversation with Besa was no exception. The first point that I'd like to emphasize is the thing that started in NMFA and remains a core aspect of their work advocacy for awareness and change. And this aspect advocacy is organized support for first the awareness of a particular problem, and then support for solutions that will correct that problem. This can take the form of legislative advocacy, as you heard Besa talk about here, but also more general awareness about the mission of an organization and the needs of the members that the organization represents. This is a bit of unfamiliar territory for those who served. We were taught that politics was something to avoid getting involved in.There even laws and directors from the department of defense that limit political activity. 

So many service members and by extension their families avoid it altogether. The advocacy that we're talking about here, however, is not engaging in political activity to advance a particular candidate or party. But instead talking to lawmakers and policymakers about the needs of a group in this case service members and military families. 

Talking to a lawmaker at either ;local state or federal level about a particular issue of importance to military families is not something that many are familiar with. But it's important to again, bring the problem to their attention and then offer a solution that solves that problem. 

That's what the founders of NMFA did 50 years ago. And that's what in NMFA is doing today, but on a large scale with the respected track record. When national organizations reach out, the lawmakers are leaders of federal agencies their phone calls and emails get answered and in NMFA is no exception. It's another way to improve the lives of those who serve and those who care for them. 

The second point that I'd like to make is related to something else that Besa mentioned in our conversation about how NMFA not only responds to needs that come up for military families, but also works to bring about solutions, to fix a system that's not working as well as it could be or should be. 

This is a type of giving fish and teaching how to fish only instead of teaching how to fish. It's making sure that there's fish in the water for those who have their poles in. You've heard this in other episodes, even with the organizations that take the same approach. They provide services or support the service members, Veterans, and their families. 

But also work to fix the problem that caused the need for those services in the first place. Whatever a particular military family needs there's likely an organization out there that meets that need. And if there isn't, you probably don't have to wait too long until there is one. It may not be easy to find or locally available or something that someone is even aware of. But from shoes to food, education to shelter, there are organizations that exist to provide those things, or at least help individuals and families work towards a solution to meet those immediate needs. 

Then there are organizations that work to point out the root causes for why there needs to be resources for shoes and education and shelter for the military affiliated population. And provide potential solutions to those problems. These efforts are designed to remove the reason for providing the needs in the first place and are much more of a long-term solution. 

Unfortunately, implementing long-term solutions takes time and change does not happen at the speed of need. So as time goes on, we find more needs-based organizations addressing the long-term problem as well as organizations addressing the long term problem meeting needs just as you see here where the NMFA was focused on long term policy change, but also needs to support military families who have current needs, both are necessary. But the most important is identifying and providing solutions for the conditions that created the need in the first place. And as Besa said, that's what NMFA has been doing the longest and what it's really good at. If you want to find out more on how to get involved, make sure to check out the links to their organization in the show notes. So, hopefully you enjoyed my conversation with Besa. If you enjoyed the show, let us know by dropping a review on your podcast player of choice, or by sending us an email at info@psycharmor.org. 

For this week's PsychArmor Resource of the week, I'd like to share the link to the PsychArmor course, Veteran 201: Military Families. The life of a military family can be chaotic and stressful. This course provides some insight into the unique challenges faced by military families. You can find a link to the resource in our show notes.