- Year Published : 2024
- Month Published : October
On October 25th and 26th, WICHE hosted the annual Together with Veterans Summit, held in Westminster Colorado. The 2024 Summit was attended by almost 170 TWV community members from across the country who all came together for the two day event. This year’s theme was Charting the Course, which encompassed 5 topics: – Planning & Connection – Goal Setting – Progress – Challenges – Celebration.
Together With Veterans (TWV) is a national program that seeks to enlist rural Veterans and local partners to join forces to actively reduce Veteran suicide in communities across the country. In collaboration with the Veterans Administration (VA) Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) for Veteran suicide prevention, WICHE implements this enterprise-wide initiative, through funding provided by the VA Office of Rural Health, and the VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.
In support of Implementation WICHE hosts the annual TWV Summit as a chance for the diverse group of rural communities to connect, learn from each other, learn of new and innovative approaches, and network with other communities from across 27 different states, territories and sovereign nations.
Attendees took part in a series of breakout sessions covering topics that include: navigating the grant landscape, team dynamics, understanding data, as well as volunteerism and goal setting. As part of the Summit the TWV communities were also able to hear from WICHE Leadership, Veteran Administration leadership about new life saving programs, as well as the data being collected on the real impact of the work being done by TWV. Attendees also had the opportunity to hear from this year’s plenary speaker Dr. Jameson Lopez.
Attendee and TWV community member Jim Crosby from Morris County Kansas shared “[TWV Summit] It’s a yearly confirmation of all the hard work we put into our Communities. Until we come to the Summit, we often don’t understand, internally, how much we’re doing. it’s our yearly time to reenergize our Team for what’s to come. We get to bring all of this new knowledge, tools and resources home to not just our Steering Committee, but our Community! ”
As part of the Summit goals, communities are also provided with tools, and material that they can take home to support the work in their communities this included breakout notes for each session, brochures, flyers, photos, and a PDF version of the Community Posters that where shared at the event to highlight the unique teams, and approaches being utilized to reduce suicide in the rural TWV communities.
