(gentle music) - My name's April Childers.

I'm the executive director of the Middle Tennessee Veterans Coalition.

We wanna get started with do we have any veterans in need?

We advocate for veterans through education, collaboration, you know, community collaboration and advocacy.

We do that through town halls.

We try to have events.

This year, our hopes is to start like at least a quarterly education series.

So, because there's so much misinformation out on the streets, like, "Oh, my neighbor told me.

Well, we want them to hear the facts.

What we really try to do is we try to bring services to our area, because we are a rural area and sometimes just getting to services is a struggle.

So that way when we have a veteran in need, we can pick up the phone and say, "Hey, Lieutenant Norris, I've got this going on.

What can you do to help me?

Hey, operation stand down."

So we've got the resources and that's I think part of the challenge is sometimes you don't know what to ask.

And finding the right person to ask it to is another challenge.

The VFW, the American Legion, they have their memberships.

You know, they have certain like VFW veterans of Foreign War.

If you didn't serve overseas, then you can't join the VFW.

The American Legion's different.

The Vietnam veterans is different, so.

And they all have their membership dues and things like that.

We don't have dues.

What we wanna do is we want to get those organizations and the community leaders, that the people that run across veterans when they're in most need.

Those are the people that we want to get to the table.

So that way when we have a veteran in need, we can say, "Hey, you do this.

We've got a veteran in need.

You know, let's get you connected.

In the jails, they weren't asking that question either where if they had a veteran status, but that has changed recently.

What we're finding is that a lot of people don't identify as a veteran.

And in their mind either because they didn't serve overseas.

It wasn't during a time of war.

Females especially do not identify a lot of times as veterans.

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