HR 5282 Needs Support in the U.S. Senate

HR 5282 would provide long-term support to the Veterans Curation Project, a Corps of Engineers project that trains wounded veterans in curation skills and helps them find work and/or encourages them to continue/resume their education. It addresses two needs -- the need for such veterans to develop marketable and intellectually stimulating skills, and the need to get federal and other archaeological/archival collections properly cared for. It's been in existence for a couple of years and already it's highly successful, with a high percentage of its graduates finding work and/or enrolling in college. Informal interviews with participants even suggests that the work may have direct therapeutic effects in handling PTSD. But the Corps money will run out soon. HR 5282 would provide longer-term funding, perhaps long enough to enable the program to become self-supporting.

HR 5282 has passed the House, but has no sponsors at all in the Senate. I've urged Maryland's Senators Mikulski and Cardin to become its champions in the Senate, and I hope they will, but anyone who's concerned about wounded veterans and/or the care of collections ought to consider asking their Senators to do the same.

For the text of the bill and its current status, see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:4:./temp/~c111RV8i2E::