On January 16, my group (Fighters 4 Fighters) and I had walked to Washington Square park with a 5 yes or no question survey. The survey we had made had 5 facts about veterans and our goal of the survey was to find out what people in society actually knew about the issues veterans face after returning home.
After the interviews we had looked over all the answers given to us by the public. The first question we asked was “Did you know 1 out of 4 homeless people are veterans”. About 21% of people known this fact and 79% didn’t. I found this very surprising. This is one fact that is absurd considering most people didn’t know what happens to veterans daily is very hard to come by. The next question we asked was “Every 65 seconds a vet commits suicide”. 5% of people we asked knew this and 95% didn’t. This fact to me is extremely frightening and it’s almost as frightening that almost everybody didn’t know what happens to them. . The next fact asked was, “Did you know the military does not provide free PTSD medicine”. About 32% of people knew this and 68% didn’t. This statistic make my group and myself think. Our government funds the military with billions of dollars, but we can’t help get back on their feet after fighting. Another question we asked was, “Did you know 20% of veterans have PTSD”. 74% of people did know this and 26% didn’t. This question was the most well known among everyone we asked because PTSD is a big issue that many veterans unfortunately face. And our final question was “Did you know veterans account for 20% of suicides”. This was one of the toughest questions I had to ask because I thought about 20% of veterans taking their lives because they can’t get the proper care they deserve. In the end 100% of the people we asked had not known this fact. We asked around 20-30 people and they had no idea that this was going on.
In the end making the survey made my group and I reazile how many people aren’t aware of the issues veterans face everyday. Overall, the survey was a great experience for us. We learned a lot about the how much other people knew about veteran issues and how my group should work hard to spread the news about homeless veterans. In the teach-in my group will use the information we learned during the survey to help us with our workshop and figure out a way to educate the ones that can potentially make a difference.
