Helping America's Military Stand at Ease

The goal seems insurmountable: to provide every member of every branch of America’s armed forces with conflict resolution skills, but the dedicated team at Conflict Resolution Academy in Smyrna is committed to make it happen through their Operation: Soldier at Ease program.

America’s military men and women face many challenges when they return to civilian life and some statistics show they might not have the skills to cope with them. Men and women in the military have a divorce rate of 7.8 percent per 100,000 - twice the civilian rate. Incidence of suicide among military men and women is 19.5 percent per 100,000 compared to 12.8 percent for civilians.

“All this time in the military teaching them how to be a soldier,” said Carol Rice, co-owner of Conflict Resolution Academy. “They go to boot camp. For whatever job they get they go to school and they learn and they practice. And then they go for extra training when they are getting ready to go for combat, but they don’t ever have any skills for what they’re going to face when they come home.”

That’s why the short-term goal of Operation: Soldier at Ease is to get the book “Understanding Conflict—A Resource for the Military Family” into the hands of every soldier in the United States military. “Understanding Conflict” is the work of Rice and Rick Voyles, Ph.D, co-owner of Conflict Resolution Academy.

Voyles, who is a subject matter expert in the areas of Conflict Management and Dispute Resolution and is a registered Neutral with the State of Georgia's Office of Dispute Resolution, has years of experience resolving conflicts. He first got involved with conflict resolution in 1988 where he helped cross-dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Eventually he got involved with mediation, which is when a third party sits between two people and helps them resolves their conflicts.

Voyles and Rice met while she was still employed as an Equal Employment Opportunity investigator. Growing up, Rice was a self-described “military brat” and married an Air Force officer. She said she always enjoyed the sense of belonging that came with the military lifestyle. However, Rice is no stranger to conflict and its affects.

“I also was a battered wife,” she said. “I had had all the personal experiences and been through a divorce and been through the workplace violence because he followed me into the workplace.”

Rice saw how affective the conflict resolution lessons Voyles taught her clients were and in 2000 the pair founded the Conflict Resolution Academy. After several years training people how to healthily resolve conflicts, Rice and Voyles noticed that many of their clients were members of the military and decided to write a book aimed specifically at them.

Currently, members of the military who are returning from active duty are given a copy of “Recovering from the War: A Guide for All Veterans, Family Members, Friends and Therapists.” But Rice thinks that this is book is ineffective. Published in 1990, it focuses mostly on the Vietnam War. Rice pointed out that the average soldier is between the ages of 18 and 24 and wasn’t even alive during the Vietnam War. The book is also long—more than 400 pages.

By comparison, “Understanding Conflict” was published this year and is only 120 pages long.

It asks readers to bear in mind four ideas when dealing with conflict: People only fight about things they care about. You can only control two things, yourself and your attitude. There’s more than one way to meet a need. And resolution is always in the future.

Mike Roberson, Operation: Soldier at Ease project manager, said the book has already helped him and his family. Roberson served in the U.S. Navy for 12 years before leaving the service because of the consequences it had on his family.

“I got out because I felt like it was going to become military or keeping my wife and kids,” he said. “And after going through this book and using it, even now I’m like, ‘Oh man, if I’d had this while I was in, I actually probably would have stayed in. We could have worked through a lot of this.’”

Roberson said he hopes he can help his comrades in the military through the work he does with Operation: Soldier at Ease.

Now that the book is written, the team behind Operation Soldier at Ease is focusing on getting it into the hands of America’s soldiers. Rice said they are looking into having them mailed to soldiers overseas as Christmas gifts, distributing them at Yellow Ribbon ceremonies and having local civic groups donate them to soldiers.

Rice said they hope to get many of the books donated at Celebrate Freedom Atlanta 2011, a free concert event that celebrates the contributions made for freedom, Saturday, Sept. 3. Last year’s event attracted nearly 50,000 visitors. This year’s concert at Marietta’s Jim R. Miller Park is headlined by Switchfoot and also features a color guard, and 5K run.

The Operation: Soldier at Ease team will have 10,000 copies of “Understanding Conflict” at the event. They’re asking participants to purchase a book to donate to a solider. They’re also sponsoring a friendly competition to see which branch of the military will receive the most donations.

“We want to put it in the hands of every soldier in every branch of the military because you’ve got to have a starting point,” Rice said.

Copies of "Understanding Conflict" are $12.95 and can be donated at the Operation: Soldier at Ease website.