On 5 Minute Salute, our host Chris Budihas talk to veterans making a difference in their communities. Today, Chris had the honor to speak with Bobby Cowart of Voices4Vets.
Bobby Cowart
President of Voices4Vets
Website Address: Voices4vets.org, VetWellApp.com
What’s one thing we should know that makes your company unique?
We’re a veteran-led nonprofit that delivers consistent weekly brotherhood support and proactive crisis prevention, extended between meetings through VetWell, our AI-powered support tool.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your business?
Starting with limited resources, we had to earn trust one veteran at a time and build consistency without a big partner network. We overcame that by showing up weekly, creating real follow-up, and developing VetWell to help scale support beyond the room.
How do you define success?
Success is veterans staying connected and stable over time showing up consistently, getting support before problems escalate, strengthening families, and building a community they can count on. For us it looks like measurable growth in participation, follow-up, and outcomes, and scaling that consistency through VetWell so no veteran falls through the cracks between meetings.
How did you get started in your field of work?
After nearly 30 years in the Navy, a VA nurse asked me to help start a veteran therapy group. We ran it for five years, but when VA funding ended the program, a group of us veterans started Voices4Vets so the support wouldn’t stop now expanded with VetWell.
Transcript
Chris Budihas
Welcome to the five minute salute. I’m your host, Chris Budihas, host today segment sponsored by the military Affairs and Veterans Department, city of Jacksonville. Harrison Conner’s team squared away our veterans with their benefits they earned through their military service. Which is ironic because I got Bobby Cowart here with Voices4Vets. Bobby, how are you?
Bobby Cowart
I’m wonderful. Good to see you.
Chris Budihas
No, no, thanks for coming in. I appreciate I saw what you’re doing on LinkedIn and I’m like, you’d have you in. I would love to have a conversation. Voices are vet voices for vets. But before we get to that, let’s talk about you. So where are you originally from and what you do in the military?
Bobby Cowart
I’m originally from, Tampa, Florida. I was a, t in the military. I was enlisted, and then I got a college degree and became an officer, and, in the dark side and came to the dark side. They call it, you know, as my dad was. Say, you guys go on the dark side, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nearly, 30 years in. So, that was my career.
Chris Budihas
Congratulations. That’s awesome.
Bobby Cowart
Thank you.
Chris Budihas
And so, I mean, you’re like a friend of mine. We were in high school together. He was. He did Marine Corps, and he did, communications in the Marine Corps and just totally something different. You chose something different, too. You could have gone. You got into Microsoft. You could have been, I don’t know, the one of these large corporations doing what you do, especially with the between your leadership and your technical knowledge.
But you chose, voices for vets. So tell us about voices us. What is voices for vets?
Bobby Cowart
Well, Voices4Vets is, a veteran-led organization. Okay. And we are, veterans that help other veterans and coping with things like PTSD, anxiety, financial issues and things of that nature. We, we just come together and just help veterans, navigate the, the challenges, the real challenges of life, you know, of coming out, coming, coming out the service, you know.
Chris Budihas
So for you guys. So how many, how many other folks are working with you? And then what does this look like? You know, you kind of mentioned already the issues coming through the door. How do how do these veterans show up on your doorstep?
Bobby Cowart
Well, word of mouth, we, we see veterans on the, around the community and we reach out to them and people come in and people send them our way. And we, we meet every Thursday at 1230. We’ll be meeting today, and we get on the online and we just talk. We just let them get a place where their voices are heard.
Chris Budihas
Okay. Yeah. And what’s what’s been the, what what what how has it been received? I mean, I get imagine you got good feedback from the veterans you’ve worked with.
Bobby Cowart
Always, always, you know, they come in and, and, kind of quiet at first, but then they open up to us because we have shared experience. Yeah. Everybody that’s in there has been through something. Okay. And and when you hear these stories, you understand that, wow, these guys are going through the same thing I’ve been through. And that’s what that was my experience when I first started.
Chris Budihas
Yeah. You know, so I found veterans, as you mentioned previously, the, we don’t talk about our feelings. We don’t talk about things. We will in many cases, we’ll just button it up and then try to drive on, put dirt on, as I say. Yeah. And then reality of it, that stuff unravels. Unfortunately, some are probably in like almost on crisis of not crisis in many cases.
What are some of the common issues you’re saying? Is it is it mental health? Is it finances or combination thereof? Marital issues?
Bobby Cowart
Everything. Everything. We online. Well, we we we use Google Meet to meet with our veterans. And we talk about everyday marital issues, suicide awareness, even even suicide issues. We try to mitigate all of that. We find help for the veterans. If they’re going through any of those challenges, we always trying to find help for them.
Chris Budihas
Yeah, yeah. You find yourself kind of like air traffic control tower, like. Okay, come in here directly this way. Come here. Go this way. So.
Bobby Cowart
Well, they have, you know, not rude. Not really. Because you’re handling those yourself because it’s all of us. And we all play a part in helping one another. We call each other. Okay? If someone is going through a challenge, I may direct that individual to talk to them. Maybe it is like a air traffic control type of deal because I’ll say, hey, can you help this person? Can you speak up? They got that expertise. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Budihas
Or experience. Yeah. They’ve been through it. Yeah, exactly. That’s wonderful. Without usernames, any, you know, best case scenarios or like, hey, we really help this veteran out, you know?
Bobby Cowart
Well, one instance that I can think of that we, one of the veterans that we have was going through great challenges, and a lot of us a group of us went to his house and just sat with him and talked to him and just communicate. And that’s what voices were best. Just give us somebody a platform or a moment to speak on what their issues are.
Chris Budihas
Yeah. And so you mentioned earlier off camera about the use of the website in AI. What does that look like?
Bobby Cowart
So the website is, vet well, ABC.com. Okay. And what we use that for in, situations where veterans may be going through challenges and there’s no one around. Yeah. And so we don’t want, veterans to be alone. So they use the AI we call the AI Sentinel. And Sentinel will, you know, just like a normal AI ChatGPT. You can talk to it. You can, tell it issues that you have. It’s not a anything else. We don’t we don’t allow it to do anything else but help you sort through your issues. Sort through your problems. Yeah. Sort of like a council, council coach, maybe even therapists. Okay. But, so we don’t allow Sentinel to talk about anything else but helping veterans.
Chris Budihas
That’s great. So waking up at two in the morning, you can’t go back to sleep because that’s what’s on your mind. I can’t find, human. I don’t want to wake them up. I got some someplace to go.
Bobby Cowart
That’s all right. And what’s good about VetWellApp.com is that you can go in there, you can play games, you can, you know, meditate. Is the meditation area on there?
Chris Budihas
Yeah.
Bobby Cowart
And also talk to the chat bot. And we also have a chat room in there. You can talk to all the veterans.
Chris Budihas
Yeah. So I know with the nonprofit space because I’m in the space myself, the time the three T’s of time treasurer talent. You know, we have we live in a very giving community here in northeast Florida, southeast Georgia. How how can folks help with, time treasure and talent?
Bobby Cowart
Well, I think that, we’re looking for support, partnership and donations and even spreading the word, you know, where you can come in, go to voices for vets, four the number, for voices4vets.org, and, donate, buy some merch, maybe help out. And those things are going to help us with, getting our headquarters, getting, we want to build a tiny house community so people can go fish and gardening and things like that, and maybe apartments for, homeless veterans and, you know, just a just a number of things that we’re trying to do to help the community and maybe even take it nationwide.
Chris Budihas
Yeah. And for those out there, you know, I been mentioned previously, you know, 25% of our households in Northeast Florida are active duty, guard, reserve or veteran. But I know the other 75% cares about the, the, the 25%. So the demand signal for these types of services, it’s not going on. It’s not going down. It’s going up.
Bobby Cowart
Right. Absolutely. It’s definitely going up. More and more people are coming in. And the people that, can’t come to our meetings, you see them online. We are sending our newsletter out there, emailing us and things like that.
Chris Budihas
Okay. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And we just I just love seeing veterans helping veterans. Yeah. And that’s, I think that’s the name of the game.
So, because you are veteran. One last question. We get ready to wrap up. So, you know, if you had one bit of advice because you did, you know, what a great career you had, to 30 years of service. What’s the one bit of advice, advice you would give, those in the military who will separate at some point will connect with,
Bobby Cowart
Get a mentor, connect, go through transition assistance. Yeah. And, get the help that you need before you get out and understand your benefits and what you need to do to acquire your benefits.
Chris Budihas
That’s great. That’s a great advice. So one more time, Bobby, before we close out, how do folks find, you know, voices for vets and then how do they find the app again?
Bobby Cowart
It was Voices4Vets. The number four Dot org and the the app is VetWellApp.com
Chris Budihas
Okay. Awesome. Hey, what we’re gonna do is take all that contact information, we’ll put our show notes so folks can go ahead and reference that they can reach out, to, to the organization or to you through the organization or through LinkedIn. So thank you for your service, the nation. Thank you for your service to the community and what you’re doing for our veterans. Do, have them have, you know, the prosperous life they so well deserve. So I appreciate it.
Bobby Cowart
Thank you. Thank you very much.
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