Connect transitioning service member to permaculture farms and employers

Good morning Permies!

I am not sure if this is the correct forum for this, I wasn't sure where it would fit best.

What I am looking to do, with help from people here, is to get more permies type agencies and farms into the DoD Skllbridge program.

https://skillbridge.osd.mil/industry-employers.htm

In a nutshell, it is a program that allows separating military members to spend the last up to 180 of service as an intern, to learn civilian sector skills to ease transition.  The employer/partner program does not pay any money, fees, or wages. The military member will continue to get their regular pay until the end of the program. The employer gets free labor for the cost of the time it takes the intern to learn.

There are very few options in the agriculture sector....like hardly any. I saw one horse rescue in Florida. Mostly corporate and government office job type opportunities. The process for getting new regenerative farms, dairies, pastured operations, permies types internships seems fairly easy at first glance. It seems like something worth sharing here and seeing if we can connect people with new opportunities and a chance to infect more brains.

I have a few specific individuals in mind myself that I will be contacting directly based on listening to their podcasts or reading their books, but I know there has to be dozens more farms or operations out there (maybe a natural building company? rocket mass heater builders that need more hands? Market gardener? Greenhouse builder?)

I'd like to see where this goes. I focused mostly on farms/agriculture because that's what I'm personally interested in, but there is such a wide variety of personalities and skillsets leaving the military every year, I'm sure that there is a permies outfit that could interest just about everyone.

What do you guys think?

Good stuff. I helped a dude get a Skillbridge "internship" at my work a few years ago when he was getting out of the Air Force. It was just like you say, a great opportunity for both sides. Easy peasy, we just signed a piece of paper and validated his hours i believe. I feel like some of people on the employer side will be dumbfounded when they see how hard some of these people work, especially if it gets them out of short-timer hell.

Dan-

That's awesome! I thought it was a relatively new process, but perhaps I just started paying more attention when it was more applicable to me. I know it is currently going through a re-vamping, so there has been more email traffic about it. It's all electronic now, but if an agency gets on the approved list, it should be fairly painless (as can be with this sort of thing).

Yeah, I got out in 2011 and I never heard of it then. The time I was talking about was, I think, 2018? Maybe 2019? So not that long ago. It might have not been called Skillbridge but it was definitely the same deal.

To be honest, I was like, "Air Force always gets the good stuff".... I thought it was just their thing.

Air force huh?? maybee they get the best stuff to interact w/ e.t.s


Here is a place you might like to contact https://shop.shelterinstitute.com/pages/career-opportunities?_pos=1&_sid=fad3496cc&_ss=r