Returning to Orientation as a Leader

February 2, 2015
Yasin Jackson

I’m not sure where my story begins. So let’s begin where I am now.

Today, I’m a Mission Continues Fellow serving as the project coordinator at the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, and my six-month commitment is just about coming to an end. When it does, I will take on two new roles: as a community project assistant at the Department of Education, and as platoon leader for the New York 1st Service Platoon.

I took the long way to get here. When I left the Army in 2007, I was excited about the life ahead of me. I had planned to go back to school and finish college and suspected that finding a job would be a snap. But it didn’t work out that way, and in two years, my husband and I struggled to pay for food and the mortgage. We bounced around the country, often with no roof over our head.

I felt like a failure. Even though I continued to go to school, I could not find a job and was barely hanging on emotionally. I felt like everything I did was doomed to fail and that at any moment I would be homeless again with no way out.

A couple years ago we moved in with my father, and I kept going out there looking for work, and when that didn’t pan out I returned to school. In early 2014, I first caught wind of The Mission Continues.

I read about joining a service platoon and 15 minutes later I was a member of the New York 1^st Platoon – a team of veterans committed to empowering local at-risk youth. It changed my life.

One of my first tasks was to help plan a service project for Hour Children, a nonprofit organization focused on maintaining the emotional connection between incarcerated and formally incarcerated mothers and their children.

I felt the impact immediately. Giving children opportunities early in life is really important to me, so they don’t have the same struggles that I did earlier in life. It was a precious opportunity to help turn difficult lives around.

I took that motivation into my Fellowship soon after I started my work in the platoon. Our orientation was in Los Angeles, and I had no idea what to expect, or even if I would measure up with my fellow veterans there.

But as soon as I met some of the Fellows, I was completely relaxed. I was already part of a service platoon, so I knew what to expect with the class service project, and I helped to break it down for others. Our service project was the renovation of a shelter for women who experienced domestic violence. Again, I felt like I was helping a group of people realize better opportunities and brighter futures.

That work did something else. My community work blossomed into confidence in showing my abilities and telling my story. The job hunt was difficult in the past, but after I got going in my Fellowship, I was able to walk into interviews and tell them about my work at The Mission Continues. It made a huge difference. You can draw a straight line from my work at Hour Children and what I’ll be doing soon at the Department of Education.

All of that brings me to last weekend in Houston—the Orientation for the newest class of Fellows, where I joined for Service Platoon training. I’m in the twilight of my Fellowship, so I wanted to tell the new class about all of the lessons I learned recently.

One of the most important things I told them was this: their Fellowship experience will show everyone how dynamic they can be. They’re not just veterans, but community leaders as well. Their Fellowship is going to redefine service and leadership here at home, and they better be prepared for it.

It was my second invigorating orientation weekend: the first came as a new Fellow, and the second as someone ready to take on the most pressing challenges in New York City. I’m still learning, but I’m still leading too.

So that’s my story. It doesn’t have an end. Just the next chapter.

Yasin Jackson served as an intelligence soldier in the U.S. Army. She is a Charlie 2014 Fellow and will soon lead the New York 1st Service Platoon.