Photo By Staff Sgt. Tegan Kucera | Spc. Meghan Shellington, a social worker, spends her days helping veterans as a social...... read more read more
Subscribe
ROMULUS, Mich. – One Soldier has spent most of her life in the pursuit of helping others, especially other veterans.
Spc. Meghan Shellington spends her days helping others. She works as a social worker at a non-profit by day, and spends many hours during the week with another non-profit organization.
“In a way, helping people is what I’ve always done,” said Shellington, a military police liaison with the 272nd Regional Support Group, Michigan Army National Guard.
Currently, Shellington is assisting the Michigan National Guard’s COVID-19 response. She started earlier in the year, working to get more Soldiers from her unit put on orders. She then transitioned to helping her unit as they turned into Assembly Area Lions. The unit uses a local hotel for the Soldiers who are going out in the public who need somewhere to stay, so they have no chance of bringing the virus home.
Life for many has become more difficult since COVID-19 appeared in the world, and everyone has been affected. Shellington, a mother of four, has had to leave her children with her ex-husband, who she calls her best friend, for the last five months. Even though she is away from her personal family, she is with her military family.
“I was prior service active duty. When I left the service and came back to Michigan, I kind of fell flat on my face, to be honest,” said Shellington. “I had lost my family in essence, because the military is my family, and I lost that connection of being with other service members.”
To get back what she had lost, Shellington joined the Michigan Army National Guard, and then used her degree to become a social worker with the Volunteers of America in Michigan. This is a group working to prevent homelessness among veterans. Due to her job, she came across another group who was helping veterans with employment and receiving their benefits.
The Lansing Area Veterans Coalition was a dying ember when Shellington first heard about it. It had once been a fairly big deal, but had lost much of that. Shellington came on and was instrumental in revamping it. First, getting it rightfully designated as a non-profit group and then helping to set up more events than they had previously been managing.
“It was important to me, because the mission behind the group is important. Connecting veterans and service members to the community,” said Shellington.
As the only currently serving military member on the board, Shellington can relate with a lot of the recent problems veterans are having. Such as not knowing what their benefits are or finding employment. The group helps out with that, usually holding small events once a month and larger ones quarterly. Normally they hold a larger ‘job fair’ in the summer, but this year’s event had to be cancelled.
“Nobody helps a veteran better than a veteran,” said Shellington.
Lately the group has been focusing in on bringing in more minorities and females. Shellington says that many times females don’t always see themselves as veterans. She is working to change this and help all the veterans in need in the Lansing area. She will go back to doing so when she is no longer needed for the COVID-19 response.
Shellington has had her hands full with being a mother, going to school for her masters degree, working full time, and putting in part-time hours helping to get veterans back on their feet. While this makes for a busy schedule, she says she has excellent time management skills and wants to put them to use helping veterans getting back on their feet. (Story by Michigan Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tegan Kucera)
| Date Taken: | 06.24.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 06.25.2020 08:44 |
| Story ID: | 372803 |
| Location: | ROMULUS, MICHIGAN, US |
| Web Views: | 298 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, A life dedicated to helping others, by SSG Tegan Kucera, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
