Every other week on NHPR, we like to highlight a nonprofit organization in New Hampshire. On this week’s episode of Give Back New Hampshire, our focus is Swim With A Mission.
Their goal is to harnesses the creativity and networks to raise money to strengthen and support worthy organizations that service, support and honor our veterans.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Phil Taub: I'm Phil Taub. Along with my wife, Julie, I'm a co-founder of Swim With A Mission.
Sal DeFranco: My name is Sal DeFranco, a former Navy Seal and a member of the board of directors for Swim With A Mission.
Phil Taub: So we started Swim With A Mission back in 2017. We have a very large population of veterans in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, too many of them are not doing well, whether it's a homelessness issue or it's a suicide issue or mental health issue.
So my wife, Julie and I took a hard look at this, and we figured out that the best place for us to help is to create an organization with amazing individuals who really care about veterans, put on fun, awesome events, raise money, and then take that money and donate it to really great veteran service organizations. So then they could provide more shelter for veterans, more food for veterans, more jobs for veterans, more service dogs, more equine immersion programs, more art therapy, all of these kinds of things.
Sal DeFranco: The Seal community, it's a very tight community, right? There's not many of us. And so from where I stand, I can see that there are more than a significant number of these warriors that are suffering at an extremely high rate. And to Phil's point, really, there are organizations out there that are doing great things, but it's very difficult to find those organizations because a lot of those organizations just aren't speaking with each other.
That's just one of the many things that Swim With A Mission is doing to kind of solve this issue. This mental health crisis, this is a true it is a true pandemic. We do have a suicide pandemic in the veteran community, and it's terrifying.
Sal DeFranco: My wife and I drove up to New Hampshire, and we were expecting to spend maybe a couple hours with the organization and drive back, and we were so blown away by the dedication, the vision, the energy, the commitment, I mean, I could use so many adjectives to describe what we saw at that event that we like committed ourselves right there to becoming a huge part of Swim With A Mission and doing anything we possibly could to support that mission. And we ended up going to that event. We stayed an extra two days.
Phil Taub: One of the things I love about our events is we've tried to create unique events that it's not just another golf tournament, it's not another 5K, it's something different. I mean, how often do you get to play paintball with the Navy Seals and really learn what building teams is really all about?
I love that our swim event is swimmers from all over the country, including from some foreign countries — we've had people from Australia and the UAE and England, and they come from all over because New Hampshire is a great place to swim. So there's a lot of opportunities. Folks don't necessarily just have to swim, but if they do, we have a short swim like a 1K, we have the more traditional Ironman triathlon distance of 5K, and then for the real open water swimmers, there's a 10K swim. There's not too many of those out there in a beautiful place like Newfound Lake. And then we have a relay event, which a lot of the Navy Seals take part in.
Sal DeFranco: These are life changing events. And when I say life changing, not only for the people attending, for the people volunteering, for us, setting it up. I mean, we do this every year and every year, we're as motivated and energized to do it better than we did it last year.
Sal DeFranco: I can't stress enough the impact that swim with the mission is having on the veteran community, in particular the Seal community, because a lot of times you'll see that, you know, the guys that are in the more elite units, those are the guys that might not be so eager to come forward with the problems that they're having. Just to be able to be a part of this and help in any way I can is what I consider, you know, one of the great honors of my life.
