Carson High senior’s Patriotic Project helps vets

A website called The Patriotic Project, through which people can help military veterans, was derived from a Carson High School student’s senior project.

Jody Ostrander, active at school and in the community in several ways, volunteers with the Northern Nevada Veterans Resource Center (NNVRC). She has for month, and she says The Patriotic Project website is an outgrowth of what she learned while doing that in her senior school project.

“After spending some time with the case managers of the NNVRC, I realized that sometimes the needs are simple,” Ostrander said. She said if people just knew a veteran needed help, they “would be there in a heartbeat.” The website at www.thepatrioticproject.org allows people to sign up as potential volunteers to help veterans, providing a widespread database of folks with time and such various skills.

Only the center can access the information and when a veteran needs help, center staff can check the database to call volunteers registered. A volunteer can agree, if available, to help with a particular veteran’s need. Examples given are transport to a doctor’s office, light housekeeping, grocery shopping, minor home repairs and the like.

Ostrander, who said she still volunteers at the center’s Carson City office about an hour weekly, indicated such neighborliness toward a veteran goes beyond the usual recognition and tribute paid former service personnel on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. She said The Patriotic Project heightens awareness about the need to help veterans, recognizing them the other 363 days of the year,

“It’s up to all of us to recognize it when we have a neighbor that might need some help,” said Ostrander, the 18-year-old daughter of Chris and Mary Jane Ostrander.

The Carson High senior said after graduation this year she intends to go to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on the east coast or to the University of Nevada, Reno, and plans to study neurobiology. She said she prefers to head east to RTI. “They’ve got a really great program,” she said.

During her time at Carson High, she has been president of the freshman and sophomore classes, served during her junior year as student body vice president, and also for part of that year headed to Washington, D.C, to serve as a Senate page. She was sponsored for that by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid.