The University of Wyoming Veterans Service Center will use grant money from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to create a new part-time recreation staff position to help connect veterans with outdoor activities throughout the Albany County community and beyond.
The recreation staff will work directly under Marty Martinez, the senior project coordinator in the veterans service center.
“We wanted to bring a person in that could help connect our veterans on campus, as well as all of the veterans within Albany County to try to move them into outdoor recreation,” Martinez said.
This position will work to expand the community resources already a part of Mission Redefined Wyoming (MRWY).
MRWY’s mission is to diversify and enhance state and community collaborations in order to increase access to adaptive sports programming for all disabled veterans and disabled members of the Armed Forces in Wyoming.
The recreational staff member will connect with the different groups hosting an event in the area and try to address the needs of the veterans with a disability so that the individual could participate in the event. This is where the grant would come in and allow the veterans service center to purchase any special equipment or training the veteran would need.
The example Martinez gave is that if there is a biking event going on in the community the recreation staff member would be able to figure out how to connect veterans to the event and then if a veteran needed a special bike to participate the staff member could make it happen.
MRWY also works closely with the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND), an academic unit in the UW College of Health Sciences.
Hannah Ginn, a project coordinator at WIND, said, “WIND’s goal with this work is to really build the infrastructure for adaptive sports programming for veterans in this state.”
Both Ginn and Martinez talked about how the new position was not going create its own programs but build off of programs already in existence and expand the community outreach.
MRWY already has many community supporters including The Albany County Grants Department, UW Veterans Center, Casper Mountain Biathlon Club, CrossFit 7220 and WIND.
At CrossFit 7220 veterans work out and are able to experience similar workouts from their service days.
“We have seen a lot of positive results from including veterans in our membership,” Nicole Bleak, manager and coach of Crossfit 7220, said. “A lot of the veterans have talked about how it [CrossFit] has helped them with depression, helped them with their PTSD, it’s helped them feel the comradery again.”
The position is due to be filled by the beginning of March.
