CSU - PUEBLO BRIEFS

VA Summer Work Study Position with VUB Available

If you are a veteran and attending summer school at CSU-Pueblo this summer, there is an opportunity as a VA-VUB Work Study at the Veterans Upward Bound Office.

Call 549-2824 to inquire.

Military scholarship

Pueblo's American Legion Riders, District 8, Post 2 established an endowed scholarship at Colorado State University-Pueblo for military veterans and their families.

The program was established as a way to help Pueblo veterans, specifically ones who have served in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan), their widows, widowers, spouses and children to attend college.

"The university is proud to have collaborated with the American Legion Riders to establish a local scholarship that will benefit veterans and their families," said Conrad Waggener, director of the CSU-Pueblo’s Veterans Upward Bound program.

"Over the next few years, there will be more and more vets returning to Pueblo to pursue their educational goals. The Riders recognition of the importance of education is particularly significant. Their interest and efforts will be appreciated long into the future." Applicants must be Pueblo County residents and be honorably discharged veterans or a widowers, widows, spouses or children of honorably discharged veterans.

Financial need will be considered but is not a prerequisite for being selected for the scholarship.

Preference will be given to veterans of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, Horn of Africa, Trans Sahara, Kyrgyzstan and Pankisi Gorge.

Check out the new GI Bill on the VA Website
http://www.gibill.va.gov/

For veterans who may need to talk to a professional counselor, confidentially, come by the CSU-Pueblo VUB office for a referral to the local Pueblo Vet Center

Check out local Pueblo job opportunities with the Social Security Administration

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/careers/

Come by the VUB Office, Occhiato Bldg., Room 006 to review local Pueblo job opportunities.

The New G.I. Post 911 Bill Will Become Effective in August 2009

Click on this website for a full Power Point

http://www.gibill.va.gov/Training/Presentations/CH33_ACE_Presentation.pdf

December 19, 2008 New York Times

Editorial

Survival Guide for Veterans

Far too often, military veterans find themselves desperately short of the information they need as they make the torturous quest for benefits within one of this country’s most daunting bureaucracies, the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Officials say help is on the way, but administrators are forever promising to streamline procedures for an era of conquered paperwork that never seems to come. That is why it is heartening to see that one promising form of help has indeed arrived: a 599-page guide to veterans’ issues, from educational help to vocational rehabilitation, from housing to citizenship.

It’s called “The American Veterans’ and Servicemembers’ Survival Guide,” and it comes, unsurprisingly, from outside the system. It is a publication of the nonprofit advocacy group Veterans for America, available as a free download at veteransforamerica.org.

This electronic book is a descendant of “The Viet Vet Survival Guide,” which was published a decade after the end of that conflict — when veterans were still being routinely and shamefully denied their rights. The new book was written by veterans and lawyers for a new generation of soldiers with old problems, like post-traumatic stress, and new ones like traumatic brain injury, the brutal legacy of Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s roadside bombs.

The authors caution that while the guide will help a veteran understand what’s going on, it is not a substitute for a good lawyer or other advocate. And it isn’t the only source of information: The government, too, has vast Web sites explaining things — for example, how officers help veterans through the disability evaluation system. (In military acronyms, it’s how the Physical Evaluation Board Liaison Officer, or Peblo, helps with the D.E.S.)

The “Survival Guide” does this, too, but with a difference: It also warns veterans to “pay careful attention to what you say to your Peblo,” because the Peblo is not required to act in their best interests the way an attorney is, and things told to a Peblo are not necessarily confidential.

No book will ever defeat a bureaucracy this large, but a book can help people to subdue it. Veterans and their families often praise the dedication of health-care providers, but at the same time express utter frustration over incomprehensible thickets of rules and the glacial pace at which benefits and appeals are decided.

Unless and until the government significantly improves its treatment of veterans — and our hopes are high for progress under Gen. Eric Shinseki, President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to run Veterans Affairs — they will have to keep looking to one another for help, as they always have. This veterans’ guide looks like a powerful updating of that old tradition.