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Two years ago, after having served four years

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in the United States Marine Corps

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and deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan,

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I found myself in Port-au-Prince, leading a team

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of veterans and medical professionals

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in some of the hardest-hit areas of that city,

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three days after the earthquake.

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We were going to the places that nobody else wanted to go,

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the places nobody else could go, and after three weeks,

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we realized something. Military veterans

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are very, very good at disaster response.

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And coming home, my cofounder and I,

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we looked at it, and we said, there are two problems.

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The first problem is there's inadequate disaster response.

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It's slow. It's antiquated. It's not using the best technology,

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and it's not using the best people.

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The second problem that we became aware of

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was a very inadequate veteran reintegration,

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and this is a topic that is front page news right now

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as veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan,

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and they're struggling to reintegrate into civilian life.

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And we sat here and we looked at these two problems,

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and finally we came to a realization. These aren't problems.

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These are actually solutions. And what do I mean by that?

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Well, we can use disaster response as an opportunity

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for service for the veterans coming home.

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Recent surveys show that 92 percent of veterans want

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to continue their service when they take off their uniform.

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And we can use veterans to improve disaster response.

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Now on the surface, this makes a lot of sense, and in 2010,

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we responded to the tsunami in Chile,

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the floods in Pakistan, we sent training teams to the Thai-Burma border.

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But it was earlier this year, when one of our

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original members caused us to shift focus in the organization.

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This is Clay Hunt. Clay was a Marine with me.

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We served together in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Clay was with us in Port-au-Prince. He was also with us in Chile.

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Earlier this year, in March, Clay took his own life.

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This was a tragedy, but it really forced us

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to refocus what it is that we were doing.

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You know, Clay didn't kill himself because of what happened

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in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clay killed himself

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because of what he lost when he came home.

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He lost purpose. He lost his community.

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And perhaps most tragically, he lost his self-worth.

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And so, as we evaluated, and as the dust settled

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from this tragedy, we realized that, of those two problems --

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in the initial iteration of our organization,

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we were a disaster response organization that was using

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veteran service. We had a lot of success,

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and we really felt like we were changing the disaster response paradigm.

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But after Clay, we shifted that focus, and suddenly,

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now moving forward, we see ourselves

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as a veteran service organization that's using disaster response.

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Because we think that we can give that purpose

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and that community and that self-worth back to the veteran.

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And tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and Joplin, and then later

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Hurricane Irene, gave us an opportunity to look at that.

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Now I want you to imagine for a second an 18-year-old boy

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who graduates from high school in Kansas City, Missouri.

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He joins the Army. The Army gives him a rifle.

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They send him to Iraq.

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Every day he leaves the wire with a mission.

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That mission is to defend the freedom of the family that he left at home.

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It's to keep the men around him alive.

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It's to pacify the village that he works in.

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He's got a purpose. But he comes home [to] Kansas City, Missouri,

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maybe he goes to college, maybe he's got a job,

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but he doesn't have that same sense of purpose.

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You give him a chainsaw. You send him to Joplin, Missouri

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after a tornado, he regains that.

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Going back, that same 18-year-old boy graduates from high school

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in Kansas City, Missouri, joins the Army,

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the Army gives him a rifle, they send him to Iraq.

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Every day he looks into the same sets of eyes around him.

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He leaves the wire. He knows that those people have his back.

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He's slept in the same sand. They've lived together.

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They've eaten together. They've bled together.

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He goes home to Kansas City, Missouri.

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He gets out of the military. He takes his uniform off.

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He doesn't have that community anymore.

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But you drop 25 of those veterans in Joplin, Missouri,

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they get that sense of community back.

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Again, you have an 18-year-old boy who graduates

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high school in Kansas City.

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He joins the Army. The Army gives him a rifle.

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They send him to Iraq.

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They pin a medal on his chest. He goes home to a ticker tape parade.

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He takes the uniform off. He's no longer Sergeant Jones

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in his community. He's now Dave from Kansas City.

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He doesn't have that same self-worth.

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But you send him to Joplin after a tornado,

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and somebody once again is walking up to him

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and shaking their hand and thanking them for their service,

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now they have self-worth again.

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I think it's very important, because right now

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somebody needs to step up,

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and this generation of veterans has the opportunity

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to do that if they are given the chance.

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Thank you very much. (Applause)