Women Veterans: Ever Been Homeless?

Women Veterans: Ever Been Homeless?

Calling all women veterans -- who have been or are currently now homeless.

Lily Casura, Journalist; Grad Student; Founder, HealingCombatTrauma.com
is looking for women veterans that have been homeless to tell their story. RP Members if you know of or have known a homeless Women Veteran please pass this on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lily-casura/women-veterans-ever-been-_b_8167632.html

While the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has made great strides in reducing the number of homeless male veterans in cities across America, the numbers of homeless female veterans are actually on the rise.

As I've written before here, part of the problem why we don't "see" women veterans who are homeless is because we're not looking in the right direction. They're not exactly like what America loosely pictures as a homeless veteran, so sadly most of us aren't aware that there are homeless women veterans. That picture needs to change.

I'm a freelance journalist and a graduate student in public policy (social work). I have been paying attention to this issue, and I am determined to make things better for women veterans. This year, I was awarded a grant from the International Women's Media Foundation to create a multimedia project about homeless women veterans. The project includes includes presenting data from a national survey I conducted last year among women veterans about periods of homelessness they may have experienced after military service. (Read more about my grant in this article from Military Times.)

Here's where you come in.

If you are a woman who served in the U.S. military and you have struggled with a period of homelessness at any point after completion of your military service, I would like to hear from you. In particular, I would like you to consider taking on a creative assignment.

Using a cellphone camera, shoot a short (one or two minutes long) video of something important to you about the story of your experience with homelessness. You can "take us on a tour" of where you lived when you were (don't endanger yourself doing this, please), or where you are now, and how that feels.

You can talk to the camera about something significant to you (and your family, if that applies) about your experience -- either during homelessness, or afterwards.

America has no idea, generally speaking, what you are going through or what you went through. Help tell America what it's been like for you -- and what the rest of us could do for women veterans that might make a difference.