TOTW: Team Rubicon

I hadn't heard of Team Rubicon until someone (thanks, Stephanie!) mentioned them in the comments of my Sandy post (P.S. For those still looking to get involved, there are lots of important links with ideas and thank you all for sharing them!) and for those who, like me, were unfamiliar with TR, I wanted to introduce you to an incredible cause that's as win/win as it gets.

In Team Rubicon's words:

Team Rubicon unites the skills and experiences of military veterans with medical professionals to rapidly deploy emergency response teams into crisis situations.

***

I few years back I had coffee with an old friend who had just returned from his second deployment in Iraq.

"To be honest, I just want to go back," he said. "I don't know what to do here anymore."

It was one of those moments where I felt completely helpless as a friend because I couldn't even come close to understanding what he'd been through and for that reason, there was nothing I could really say, so I said very little, asked questions, listened, wished there was more I could do...

I think about that conversation often - I think about those whose spouses and significant others serve. I think of military families, separated, reunited, only to be separated again, and those, like my friend, who came home from war to a place that hadn't changed.

"I feel like everyone is exactly the same except for me."

***

On the streets of Port-au-Prince, in the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, TR’s military veterans realized a simple truth – natural disasters present many of the same problems that confront troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: unstable populations, limited resources, horrific sights, sounds and smells.  The skills cultivated on those same battlefields – emergency medicine, risk assessment and mitigation, teamwork and decisive leadership – are invaluable in disaster zones. 

To find out more about Team Rubicon go here. To donate money to Sandy relief by way of Team Rubicon's efforts, go here.

And to all the veterans and families who serve? Thank you.

GGC

image via stayclassy.org. Read the full CNN Team Rubicon story, here.