Abstract Summary
The challenges we face are evident. What’s happening to our planet is real. There are facts to convince, figures to corroborate and stories to compel. Yet the message is still getting lost. Why? The easy answer is “People don’t want to hear it.” Which begs the follow-up question, are we doing everything in our power, as leaders in this fight, to make them WANT to hear it? Jim Ritterhoff, Executive Director and Co-Founder of FORCE BLUE, a 501c3 non-profit initiative that retrains, retools and redeploys Special Operations veterans and military-trained combat divers on marine conservations missions, will discuss the unique problems his organization was built to address – namely, the difficultly our returning combat veterans have in adjusting to civilian life and the rapidly declining health of our planet’s marine resources. He’ll share how, in uniting two seemingly unrelated worlds, FORCE BLUE is creating a model of caring, cooperation and positive change with the power to restore, not only coral reefs, but human lives as well. And he’ll talk about FORCE BLUE’s philosophy -- that it doesn’t matter whether you get on the boat from the left side or the right side; we’re all in the same boat – and how the organization is using the Veterans’ megaphone to preach beyond the traditional environmental choir.
