VetREC is a matchmaking network and incubator that centers the Veteran voice.
As a woman and Veteran-owned small business, VetREC (Veteran Research and Education Curation LLC) has a vision to influence all Veteran-focused research, programs, and healthcare to be designed with, not on, Veterans. The guiding principle driving VetREC is that if it’s for Veterans, it must be Veteran-centered to have meaningful and positive impact.
What does VetREC do?
VetREC merges Veteran-centered research + practice through offering consulting services and stewarding the VetREC Community. The VetREC Community is a virtual, private, member-only networking platform that brings together Veterans (+family), community leaders, and researchers ready to learn, partner, and collaborate so we can curate Veteran-centered research and services.
Glimpse inside the VetREC Community:
Being part of the VetREC Community will help you:
- Be an advocate for Veteran-centered research, programs, and healthcare.
- Empower and heal Veterans (+ family/caregivers).
- Turn data into action and impact with Veterans.
- Align your work with the true needs of the Veteran community.
- Write stronger, more competitive grant proposals for your Veteran-centered research and services.
- Collect, translate, and disseminate data with Veterans.
- Design research and program/service projects with rather than on or for the Veteran community.
Community change happens through partnership. The VetREC Community is where you find, form, and sustain partnerships to help you impact Veteran communities.
In the VetREC Community you get to:
Access a curated platform to meet like-minded others, brainstorm new research and program ideas, partner and write competitive grant proposals, and make community impact through your collaborative work.
Engage in (and organize your own) regularly scheduled virtual events for partnership development, focused on topics you’re passionate about and want to expand your impact in.
Join interest groups, or form your own, so you can find and partner with Veteran advocates/leaders and researchers with the same passions and goals as you.
Highlight your skills and experience on your personal profile, create and share posts in social feeds, set up questions and polls for get quick community input, and send direct + group messages to connect and form collaborations.
Share your announcements about new offerings and novel opportunities for research engagement and count on your VetREC Community to help you spread your message through the national Veteran ecosystem.
Search and locate other members who live near you to organize in-person gatherings for program delivery, research recruitment/engagement, and social meet-ups.
Access premium offerings such as grants guidance, partnership development and project workshops, Veteran engagement and research recruitment courses, and more.
Veterans and family members/caregivers get opportunities (often paid ones!) to join research teams and/or non-profits serving Veterans to be an advocate, ambassador, and a voice for the Veteran experience.
Researchers get access to a national network of Veterans and community partners in the non-profit space to help with your research engagement.
Leaders and advocates of Veteran-serving organizations get access to a national network of researchers that can help measure and report on your program/service outcomes.
Who should join?
| Ideal VetREC Community Members are: |
|---|
| Individuals who are currently or who have previously served in the U.S. Military and/or are a family members/caregiver. |
| Researchers (tenure track, non tenure track, independent, private/government sector) working on or interested in Veteran-focused research. |
| Students of Veteran Studies. |
| Leaders/advocates working in a community-based and/or governmental organization offering direct services, programs, and/or care to Veterans. |
Frequently Asked Questions
The VetREC Community is free to join. To become part of the community, you must request to join (click any of the ‘Join Community’ links on the website) and answer three simple questions. You will have full access to the community platform once your request has been approved. After you are in the VetREC Community, you will have the option to pay for premium offerings, like exclusive spaces within the platform focused on certain topics (i.e., guidance for Veteran-focused grants, recruiting Veterans for research, etc.), courses, and more.
Too often, Veterans and their family members/caregivers are not involved in the design, implementation, and dissemination of research about them or in program development designed to serve them. This antiquated model of creating research/programs for or on a community instead of with the community often results in missed opportunities for actual impact and true community change. No one knows and understands the Veteran experience more than Veterans. Lived experience must inform research for research to affect lived experience. If Veterans aren’t part of the research that informs service and program development, the services and programs will likely not align with actual community needs. VetREC’s motto is research with, not on, Veterans, and the VetREC Community welcomes Veterans and their family members/caregivers to the table. We’ve saved you a seat. Your voice matters, and your insights can help make a difference for your brothers and sisters in arms. Join us.
Joining could open up opportunities for you to serve as (paid!) consultants in the form of Project Ambassadors and/or Advocates on research studies that need someone with lived experience (i.e., living with combat-related PTSD, being a survivor of MST, having TBI, etc.) to help guide the project. If you want to share your voice, want to continue your service through impacting Veteran communities, and are passionate about translating research into practice, the VetREC Community is for you. If the community isn’t a good fit right now, you can still join the VetREC mailing list to get information about opportunities to engage in (paid) research projects focused on Veteran issues.
That is 100% up to you! But I promise, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. There are no requirements for how much time you spend in the community, but once you join, you will quickly realize how engaging in the community fosters new relationships, sparks new ideas, and leads to new projects that have direct impact with Veterans.
For starters, the VetREC Community is only for Veterans/Service Members (+family), Veteran community leaders, and Veteran Studies reserachers. All within one platform, you can create posts, articles, questions/polls, groups, topics, and events. You can directly interact with people like you, doing similar work as you, needing partnerships just like you, all within one cohesive platform. No more weeding through profiles, followers and groups online that aren’t connected to your work or interests. The VetREC Community is an intentional space with the primary purpose of fostering new partnerships and collaborations among members, so we can create direct impact in Veteran communities through our work.
Sure! But joining the VetREC Community makes that much easier for you to do. Rather than searching through your own network, trying to build a new network of potential partners, or even cold-calling/emailing potential partners, the VetREC Community brings together stakeholders from both sides (service organizations + researchers) to make forming partnerships seamless and dare I say, fun.
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