Click here to support Help Founder Save Veterans Lives by Ilene Morris

Join us for webinars on Thursday evenings to become a part of the program or volunteer to help with the program. Go to the website to sign up for a webinars (Business or Veterans/Active Duty Service Members)

http://www.sponsoravet.life

Veteran Testimonials!
Sponsor a Vet Life

Colonel Mikel Burroughs testimonial about the program to-date and its future.

I wanted to share my experience with everyone about Sponsor a Vet Life (SAVL), where it originated from, where it is today, and where it will be in the future. To really understand the beginning, you need to understand our history. We've been working in the Virtual World Environment with the technology for over 13 years now. Over 10 years ago the company employed over 500 disabled veterans and individuals with disabilities that worked on projects to bring offshore outsourcing jobs back home to America. During this (5) year run, over 500 plus employees with all types of disabilities in a Virtual Call Center grew beyond their disabilities as individuals and employees. During that 5-year time period the company was able to save (6) six individuals from committing suicide, because of the unique and timely built in protocols established within the company to handle those type of situations. Based on this experience we were troubled by the many suicides being reported by our veterans and so Sponsor a Vet Life was born as a D/B/A and placed under current Non-Profit 501(c)3 Kids4Horses. Approximately 18 months ago we took the lessons learned and the same proven technology that helped build confidence, outgoing personal growth, focus driven motivation, enthusiastic personalities, and positive personal growth and built the Sponsor a Vet Life platforms being used today on a limited basis as the organization grows through self-funding and partnering with businesses and companies to achieve a 24/7 environment with protocols and peer-to-peer support to help reduce and someday eliminate veterans and active duty PTSD suicides. The mission is very clear and well defined.

"Roll out a proven solution for many of the challenges Active Duty Service Members, Disabled Veterans, and their families experience. We’ll be providing full collaborative communities, utilizing virtual reality tools to help stop the Veteran PTSD/TBI.MST and severely disabled suicides per day. All the communications occur in a 3D interactive, immersive virtual environment. We've successfully used these tools in the past to save lives and will continue to save more veterans and active duty members.”

That is the background and then I joined the organization in August of 2015 and found a new purpose after retirement to help veterans, active duty members, and their families. The road has been rough and rocky, but yet still rewarding. We made an attempt to get over 10,000 of our LinkedIn Connections to donate a simple $10 a month to sponsor veterans that were suffering from PTSD, TBI. MST, or that were severely disabled. We started off with a campaign that we thought would definitely ignite the community around this need for additional help and to our dismay we received not one single sponsor to help a veteran into the program. That did not stop us. We pushed on by connecting with service members and veterans on RallyPoint weekly and starting building a volunteer from scratch base and that was a rough road as well with some volunteers really stepping up and other just wanting to be a part of the team, but with no time available to assist in building the organization. We still have a great team and we add members and we lose members based on their schedules and other priorities. We have a few that have stuck it out from the beginning that aren’t veterans, but do it because they believe in helping them day in and day out.

We started to realize that we had to change directions by using some of the lessons learned from our previous company that distance learning in the Virtual World could pay big dividends for trainers, coaches, and businesses. We quickly changed directions and open up the doors for the very first time in November of 2015, conducting webinars on Thursday evening for veterans that wanted to volunteer or become a member of SAVL because they were suffering from the affects of PTSD, TBI, MST, or they were severely disabled and thus the organization started to take shape. The growth has been slow, painful at times, and yet rewarding when we see how well our current veterans and volunteers (mostly from the veteran community) have really shown a lot of improvement in helping with the mission and being a part of it all at the same time.

The program has continued to be self-funded on a monthly basis and so do our veterans to keep it going and growing. We’ve partnered with our first great company The Networking Doctors, which is run by one of our very own veterans SPC Lazaro (Laz) Diaz] and his wife Digna. They are doing great things with their Cisco Certification Training in the Virtual World. We have many other partners that are getting ready to move forward with us, so the future is very bright and we are getting ready to turn a big corner here soon, but in the meantime we will continue our mission to find ways of keeping the virtual regions up for our current membership and we will continue to pursue more veterans and active duty members through our webinar in the evenings.
So, if you have PTSD, TBI, MST, or your severely disabled then come check us out. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We do have some individuals that make a donation, so I’ll provide the different levels of donations and we have a few that are actually just sponsoring veterans and active duty service members monthly and their families. I’ve provided that information as well for those that want to and will help us get through this tough period over the summer. Remember, this is a non-profit organization that not only is trying to save horses, but is helping save our veterans and active duty service members to help with rescued animals that would have been killed, that now will be trained to be therapy animals.

Thanks for taking the time to read my testimonial on Sponsor a Vet Life (SAVL). Colonel (Retired) Mikel Burroughs







SSG Anthony Wragg PO2 Paul Endes PO1 Melinda (Mindy) Bernhardt LT (Join to see) LT David Phillips SPC Matt McLeod SSG Aaron Marshall PO3 James Carter SPC Dawud Makonnen Cpl Justin Goolsby SGT Eric Flores [~816426:SPC(P) Christian Juarez