Your Mentor’s Role
How a Mentor Can Facilitate Your Transition
Your Mentor can facilitate your transition in a variety of ways:
- Helping you identify the options and paths available to you
- Serving as a sounding board or advisor as you evaluate your options
- Ensuring that you are aware of and can access those resources and protections to which you are entitle, both while in the military and after you transition to the private sector
- Providing an “always there” person you can talk to
Some of the specific functions a Mentor can perform are:
Life Planning: Help you, with your family, set life goals, plan a path to those goals for a productive life, and face the future realistically by laying out your options, and assisting you in making decisions about your future based on your interests and desires. Options may include a continuation of your military career by staying on active duty (COAD or CORD) in a different military specialty if you cannot retain your current one. Our focus is three to five years out.
Education: Help you plan your education with a focus on preparing you to achieve your life-long career goals and then assist you in putting an education plan into action. We will work with and encourage you to take courses at local military bases and colleges as well as online courses paid for by the Department of Defense while you are still on active duty.
Jobs and Internships: We work with you for a follow-on job after military service and have an extensive list of job opportunities in the Washington D.C. area and around the country. We also can advise you on finding internships that are available to you and guide you to the proper points of contact to be accepted into one during your transitioning period.
Benefits: Help you understand and take full advantage of your benefits such as the GI Bill and VA Benefits which may include the VA Vocational Rehabilitation Program.
Financial Planning: Assist you by providing direct help from a WWMP Financial Planner who will help you prepare a personal budget and make sound financial plans.
Navigating the Disability System: WWMP can provide a Disability Systems Counselor to assist with the Integrated Disability Evaluation System’s (IDES) Medical Evaluation Board & Physical Evaluation Board (MEB & PEB), VA Disability, and Social Security Disability systems – both how they work and how to apply for them. Additionally, the disability systems counselor and your Mentor can help you understand the interaction among your Military Disability Retirement pay, your VA Disability Compensation payments, and Social Security Disability payments.
Outreach: Put you in touch with various individuals, organizations, and programs that are in place to help you meet specific needs.
Guidance and Advice: Assist you in any way we can during your recovery, rehabilitation, and transition by being a sounding board for your ideas, questions, and concerns as well as helping you understand and work through the complex military medical system.
What Happens If You Leave the Military?
It can be a tough transition — suddenly you’re away from the military medical environment and a place where you have been the focus of much attention. You may be thrust into an environment where people may be, at best, indifferent to your situation or back with family members who don’t know what to do.
WWMP has an expanding group of Follow-On Mentors available in many parts of the country ready to continue supporting and assisting you and your family. These follow-on mentoring services are available as long as you need them.
