Most of Cindy Meili’s time is devoted to creating navy households’ lives higher. That is why her husband, Air Pressure Col. John Meili, nominated her for Armed Forces Insurance coverage’s Partner of the 12 months (SOY) program.
After a number of rounds of voting, Meili was introduced because the 2022 Nationwide Guard Partner of the 12 months. Now on the midway level of her tenure, Meili is profiting from her platform to do much more.
Her efforts begin at house. She and John have been married 29 years, by means of which he is gone from enlisted to officer, lively obligation to Nationwide Guard. Their two sons adopted him into the Air Pressure. She works because the assistant director of the Onondaga County, New York, Veteran Service Company and because the veteran outreach coordinator for Skaneateles, New York.
In what free time she has, she serves on the Army Household Advisory Community Advisory Board and volunteers with a number of different military-focused organizations.
The SOY recognition offers Meili a platform to advocate for higher understanding of what guardsmen and their households want from their communities.
She stated many nonetheless consider guardsmen as simply weekend warriors, if they consider them as service members in any respect. However she factors out that since 9/11, the Nationwide Guard is now not a strategic reserve. Meaning households with a liked one deployed would possibly want the native college to know why a scholar is appearing up, or employers to know why a partner would possibly want a versatile schedule.
“Folks wish to be supportive,” Meili stated. They simply must know the best way to assist. And communities that assist the navy members of the family at house are serving to the service members who’re away give attention to their mission.”
Meili encourages her fellow Nationwide Guard spouses to search out methods to attach with one another by means of the Air Pressure’s Key Partner program or the Military‘s Soldier and Household Readiness Teams. Even when they’re extra unfold out than they might be on an active-duty set up, if spouses take the time to share their tales, contribute and take heed to others, the teams will show to be precious.
She leaned on her Key Partner staff when her husband joined the Air Nationwide Guard in 2008, and now can draw on her household’s experiences as her husband moved up the ranks to offer perception.
“Get entangled,” Meili stated. “All of us have particular abilities.”
Meili is also utilizing her platform to ask residents to contact their representatives in Congress in assist of H.R 2974/S. 3909, the Army Partner Hiring Act. It will broaden the Work Alternative Tax Credit score to incorporate the hiring of a certified navy partner. It has bipartisan assist however has stalled.
And he or she needs to make extra folks conscious of MFAN’s data-driven work. The advisory board cohort earlier than hers drafted the navy housing Tenant Invoice of Rights, which went into impact in August 2021. It was based mostly on outcomes from MFAN’s biennial Army Household Help Programming Survey.
The group introduced the newest survey’s outcomes to the Division of Protection, veteran service organizations and different members of the navy neighborhood on the Options Summit this July.
“They requested me to be on the stay hearth chat,” Meili stated “The summit was capable of get my perspective of what was occurring for spouses and households.”
In his nomination letter, Meili’s husband wrote, “She welcomes all into her circle and shines a light-weight brighter than anybody I’ve seen.”
Know a navy partner who shines their gentle on the neighborhood? Go to the Armed Forces Insurance coverage Army Partner of the 12 months web site for nominee eligibility and program timelines.
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