A view from the mountainside – a milestone for HKY4Vets

HKY4Vets will reach an important milestone this week – celebrating our 7th anniversary of working with and on behalf of military families eager to make a successful life/career transition(s) from their active military service.

To those that have supported us, partnered with us, taught us, sought us out, listened to us, guided us, funded us, and been assisted through our work these past seven years, thank you for your individually large contribution to HKY4Vets and its mission. You have made our work possible and have brought joy to much of the hard work we seek to accomplish every day – all 2,553 of them these past seven years.

It has been an unexpected journey to say the least.

If you have followed us for some time, you already know in Spring 2016 we never saw this thing as a “thing” or really going anywhere; we saw our participation at an on-base hiring event (Fort Bragg) as a singular event and not the beginning of some larger, organized effort that would eventually evolve into HKY4Vets and an organized plan of work.

Yet, here we are, with our “foot on the gas pedal” working in partnership with 50+ companies and working to assist 100+ service members/spouses in just the past year alone.

We still admittedly find it remarkable 4-5 hours of talking with transitioning service members at that one 2016 event provided sufficient “fuel” to not only jump start our work in 2016, but had enough left over to energize the 1000s of hours of diligent time and more than $100,000 spent since committed to our mission.

It is the clearest evidence we have seen that “a mighty flame [can] followeth a tiny spark” (h/t Dante Alighieri).

We still have so much more to undertake with this organization and many promising areas for growing our impact in the years ahead, but this seven-year milestone affords us the ability to stop, breathe for a moment and take in the beautiful view from hiking up an everlasting mountain.

Again, our most heartfelt appreciation to those that have hiked with us throughout and provided the energy to keep us climbing higher and higher to help our nation’s transitioning military families.