Tackling military needs

Now for Veterans Valor, an organization stepping in to help our military families in need. USAA Pentagon Partnerships Director Nate Summers joining us live in studio to introduce the new Fuel to Serve initiative, welcoming Nate here to Fox 5 with us here. So explain to us a little bit about what this initiative is and what you all plan to do with it. Yeah, Fuel to Serve is USA's newest initiative under Honor Through Action, which is a program to go tackle the biggest challenges facing military families. We partner with the Robert Irvine Foundation to use food as an entry point to go look at the biggest issues in readiness and financial education and well-being for military families. And we use food at the dining table to really enhance financial readiness and education and well-being for military families. It's hard to imagine that here these families are putting their lives on the line and food is potentially something that they're insecure about. What are you seeing when it comes to the numbers, especially for some of those maybe younger enlisted families that are out there? Yeah, the Military Family Advisory Network has shown that 57 percent of junior enlisted families are facing low food security. And Blue Star Families' recent survey showed that 30 percent of military families struggle to put balanced meals on the plate. And so we can use USA and Honor Through Action and our partners to connect people through food and then take that and then enhance their lives through financial education and well-being and enhance readiness. And I know you all have said that this isn't just a food issue, a meal issue. This is so much more than that for you all, right? Yeah, USA started, you know, more than a century ago. We were founded by, you know, U.S. officers, and our mission is to serve those who serve. And we've been doing that for 100 years, and it goes beyond finances. It goes into financial security, overall well-being, and meaningful careers. And that's what Honor Through Action is. It's a five-year, $500 million commitment to go out and move beyond philanthropy, to go in and really focus on ways that we can do things through business transformation, policy and advocacy, and then coalition building so that we can go enhance the lives of military families. We believe that when we enhance those lives through financial education and security, we are securing and making the nation more secure. I know the pilot program that you guys are doing, it is based, one part of it here in D.C., but also Fort Bragg, a very popular folks at home at the military. You more likely than not have probably had to stop there at Fort Bragg. Yeah, the Washington, D.C. region will be one of our two, like you said, as Fort Bragg, right? Well, we will partner with the Robert R. Knight Foundation to really go in and move beyond the dining table and listen to families going to the Department of War education activity and to school feeding and really look at what we can do to enhance the food ecosystem beyond just the everyday feeding with the dining hall into nutrition, education, and employment. Yeah, it's so important as well for the whole family, not just for the military service member, as well as some of the spouses. We know these relocations can affect the whole family, and that's something that you all really there are encompassing at USAA. Yeah, I served for 25 years. I think you come from a military family, and military life can be disruptive. of multiple moves, you know, employment, like you said, right? And so what we want to do is take the stress out of putting good, healthy, nutritious meals on the table as those daily life challenges are, you know, hitting them. We can then provide the assistance and the capability so that they don't have to worry about what's on the table. What does the growth look like from here? Yeah. So like I said, we're going to go through our two pilot locations and we're really going to learn what we got right, what we got wrong, and then what we missed. And then we're going to, you know, take that and use impact and then scale it across the entire department of war well thank you for everything you guys are doing to provide uh food and family services to our military our service members and their family where can people find more information if they're interested www.fuel to serve.org you can find everything about there or go to usa.gov awesome nate thank you so much for joining us here this morning