Pact Reflection #2

Jack Hamilton

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday Morning at 8am

Veterans Association

Raul Gilbert

Tel 650.566.0240, Email RGilbert@vetsresource.org

From all the veterans I have helped, I believe I have had an enormous impact.  There are a wide range of people, some of which refused my help, but those who allowed me to help found out that they could now store all their resumes and job applications in the cloud, where they could access them from anywhere and be much more efficient with searching for jobs or permanent housing.  They were very grateful, as I also helped some of them with other technological issues.  One veteran had a faulty Wi-Fi router at home, so he had to come down to the VA to apply for jobs, but after asking him some questions, we got to the root of the problem and he had tech support come to his house and quickly fix the issue.  He was then able to do his job searching from home!

Some of the other volunteer work I did was for the benefit of the VA itself.  They needed to provide the best facilities possible for veterans to make it easy for them to get re-established.  I spent most of my downtime between helping people cleaning the computers and getting rid of the various documents and downloaded files that had accumulated over the years.  I helped some veterans transfer the files they had stored on the computers to their own new Dropbox accounts.

From this experience, I realized how lucky I am that I don’t have to go through the same grueling job and housing application process that these people have to go through.  They were sending out dozens of applications and hearing back from only a few.  In their position, I don’t know that I’d be able to stay positive, but they were handing it well and kept sending out applications and refining the process at my advice.  It was humbling to see them work so hard for things I take for granted daily.