GIVING BACK: Merging Vets & Players
BlogAugust 05, 2024
Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day.
This issue we are highlighting Merging Vets & Players (MVP), a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower combat veterans and former professional athletes by connecting them after their tours of service and their active sports lives end. MVP strives to provide the vets and former athletes with a “new team” to assist with transition, promote personal development, and give them a new community.
MVP [a 501(c )(3) organization] was founded in 2015 by sports reporter Jay Glazer and former Green Beret and Seattle Seahawk Nate Boyer. They wanted to address the challenges that combat veterans and former professional athletes face in transition into their new lives away from the battlefields and playing fields.
According to information from the organization, Glazer was inspired to launch the program in 2015, after speaking to the wife of a friend, who was a former NFL player: The friend’s wife said that the former player was depressed and aimless after leaving the sport. Glazer realized that the friend’s experience seemed similar that of other veterans he and Boyer had known.
MVP combines a program of intense physical workouts with peer-to-peer check-in sessions to support the military veterans within its ranks. MVP operates out of training centers in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Dallas – all areas with large populations of both veterans and families and National Football League retirees. In addition, MVP hosts multiple weekly virtual meetings to ensure that both veterans and former athletes across the country can seek help and community.
For additional information, visit https://vetsandplayers.org.
