Air Force veteran, Donnie Davis is making an effort to build a community that aims to help Air Force veterans who have been facing post-traumatic disorder after their service in the defense forces. Davis found himself facing the same problem after he finished serving during the Afghanistan War. He is of the opinion that he wished to help as many people going through this situation, and also to make sure that people understood the situation and volunteered to help. According to what he said in his interview with GoodNewsNetwork, his aim is not only to provide help to these people but at the same time make sure that he can inspire others to volunteer for helping in this cause.
What led to this idea was a number of suicides by people suffering from the post-traumatic disorder and the rate at which this was increasing. It was surprising for Donnie to see that there was no one doing anything to change the situation. There were hardly any facilities to make sure that these people could get out of the situations, where even after the experience of the trauma they were not able to get off the negative thoughts.
During his interviews with several publications, Donnie has persistently emphasized that all he wanted was that these veterans get the opportunity to get back on their feet and bring back stability in their lives. It is not just about giving them guidelines for what they need to do, how they can recover from their current situation and get rid of the negative thoughts. The whole idea is to make sure that they get the environment that they need to transform the state of their mind and restart their lives.
A micro housing community in Franklinville, New Jersey, founded by Davis, aims to provide all kinds of facilities which include shelter and housing facilities, counseling facilities and various therapies in order to help these people to recover from their current state.
The transformation of mind is not possible by only medication or counseling. It requires an environment that can facilitate the change in mind and the presence of supportive people who can relate to what the patient is going through. This housing community is aimed at providing that community and the support of like-minded people who can relate to the suffering of the patient.
According to what Davis had to say, providing the housing was not the challenging part of the whole project. But, what was challenging was providing the counseling and the therapies for these people. This had to be customized keeping in mind the kind of experience that they had been through. It is required to be different for every individual, and it had to be such that it would work on the kind of mental baggage that an individual is carrying. The same set of therapies and solutions could not be used for all of them. Their needs were different, and the way they would heal was also all very different.
Davis chose to do all of this for free. He launched the Go Fund Me campaign, to raise for facilitating the set-up of this community. It is truly inspiring to see a man helping people who need support to get out of the mental trauma so that they can get back to living their life again.
