Essay Example on Reintegrating Individuals Into Society: Social Integration and Beyond

Reintegration is the process or the action of integrating an individual back into society. Integration according to Burgess and Park, is the process of fusion and interpenetration through which groups and individuals gain the attitude, memories as well as sentiments of other individuals and groups through sharing of their history and experience incorporating them together in a healthy cultural life. Social integration, therefore, is the process through which the minorities or the newcomers are incorporated into the host society's social structure (Elnitsky et al. 2017). The newcomers get to learn the identity integration, the social integration as well as the economic integration dimensional experiences in the societies that receive them.

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Since the year 2001, the United States military service has deployed over three million of its members to Operation New Dawn, Operation Enduring Freedom as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom and according to the military service members and veterans, there have been many cases reported resulting from mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, physical health problems, traumatic brain injury, major depression, anxiety as well as the difficulty of transitioning from the military operations to the civilian roles from the formerly deployed military (Castillo et al. 2018). This paper tries to explain some of the ways through which the government and non-profit organizations can and has helped veterans reintegrate to healthy social lives.

I am the director of the Save a Life that Saves Consultancy Company, and my organization has been contracted by the government to monitor and see an influx of all the veterans coming back from the war and needs some reintegration assistance. The fact that there is the need of the public view of a collaboration between the organizations operating in the country and the government, I together with my organization will work closely with service managers and leaders in the several workshops that we shall be held in order to build a fruitful interagency and cross-sector collaborations which will help the returning veterans.

Veterans who have already become private citizens, as well as the representatives of the organizations that we are going to work with, are some of the audiences who are going to participate in the workshops. My organization has been actively participating in activities that have in high impact transformed the lives of most individuals whom we have assisted before mostly those individuals to suffer from mental and physical health effects due to various reasons as well as most ex-military individuals. This is a critical factor that contributed to my organization being chosen to partake the role of the government. We have worked with the government several times and have skilled professionals working at the organization, and because of all these factors, the government trusted the company and me to sign the contract.

The government believes that reformers have ideas that are mixed and matched and that they have initially produced significant effects in America as well as other nations hence they decided to look for a company suitable for the role, a company whereby management matters just as politics matters since in this situation it mattered politically and in the process, our organization was chosen as best for the role. The fact that many reforms have previously led to significant and sometimes new, unexpected problems, effective management was a key factor to consider.

Some of the organizations that are key for collaboration in this role include the United Nations, the United States Military Service, and the Amnesty International. These organizations are essential in this role mainly because they are organizations that have participated in various international events that involve individuals under different circumstances across the globe. Collaboration is the process whereby two or more organizations or individuals work together in the aim of achieving a goal or completing a task. It is a process similar to cooperation which requires leadership even though the type of leadership can be social within an equal as well as a decentralized group. Those teams or groups that tend to work collaboratively usually access greater rewards, resources as well as recognition whenever they face competition for scarce resources.

An organization such as the United Nations is an intergovernmental organization which plays the role of maintaining international peace and security, being a center of harmonizing the actions of nations, developing friendly relations among countries as well as ensuring the achievement of international co-operation. This organization goes for missions with lightly armed troops and unarmed military observers who plays the roles of monitoring, confidence-building as well as reporting hence its an vital organization to collaborate within the case of reintegrating returning veterans since it has been dealing with similar issues and members of the military services in the field across the globe (Baehr, & Gordenker, 2016).

The United States Military Service is an organization consisting of the United States armed forces that include the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and, the Air Force. This is an organization center to the operations or all the United States military and is helpful in the collaboration since it will provide information on the different challenges that soldiers face in the field, explosives they interact with as well as other weapons that they use while at work. The organization will provide information on the impacts of the guns to the soldiers who use them as well as guiding in reintegrating those veterans who return from the war areas (Bolanos et al. 2015).

Amnesty International is an organization that mainly focuses on the rights of individuals across the globe. The organization campaigns for a world where every human enjoys all the human rights preserved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the international instruments of human rights. In the collaboration, the organization will provide information on how the human rights of the veterans are to be allowed and how the veterans will be made aware of their rights as private citizens just like other citizens in the country. Amnesty International together with the other two organizations in the collaboration will act as a tool to help the veterans in the reintegration process (Price, Gohdes, & Ball, 2016).

Collaboration is essential since it helps in saving of costs due to the share of administrative expenses by all the participating organizations, it helps in improving efficiency, it enhances leadership skills, helps in the expansion of value propositions, helps in making use of compatible abilities and skills as well as in the strengthening of programs. The total sum of the whole is usually more significant than the total amount of part, meaning that working together in collaboration may result in accomplishments that are greater in comparison to every organization operating as an individual.

When organizations work together, they share some things as well as resources, and in the process, an individual company may be an expert in playing a specific role which it can enable the other organization to learn about it. Collaboration helps organizations in overcoming obstacles in that when an organization faces problems which abstract it from achieving its goals the other organizations may assist hence networks, partnerships, as well as coalitions, are much powerful than when organizations operate individually. Collaboration also helps in increasing the awareness of a company to the community; hence an organization's message is best relayed to the city when it collaborates with the more prominent organizations. Therefore leaders of small and upcoming organizations should make an effort to form collaborations with the large and enormous organizations to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of their projects.

Civic engagement is any group or individual activity which addresses issues of public concern which aims at making a difference in the civic life of people as well as enhancing a combination of values, knowledge, motivation, and skills to make the difference. In our case, technological based civic engagement with veterans as well as the non-veterans may be used in ways that can enhance the collaboration initiative created. Some of these ways include the strengthening of citizen voices. Digital technologies today enables people to get their voices heard across the public sphere. The online communications are both vertical and horizontal while the other platforms including social media allow the users of the internet to share their views as well as connecting with other individuals across the world (Vangen, Hayes, & Cornforth, 2015).

Digital platforms will enable the veterans as well as the non-veterans to communicate with the organizations as well as enabling policymakers to get new channels through which they can communicate with the citizens and the veterans. This platform then allows the collaborating organization to come together and reviews the issues raised by both the veterans and non-veterans and together they make decisions which they share as one decision by all the organization. Meaning that they come up with their different reasonings and ideas, sits together and agrees on the best choice of all decisions hence this way helps in the strengthening the collaborative initiative between the four organizations since they have to sit together and decide on one option or response or action.

Facilitation of social support and cohesion is another way through which collaborative initiative can be enhanced. Citizen to citizen online connections as well as communications can help in ensuring the mobilization of existing communities also new ones without being restricted by geographical location and size. The digital technologies help creating a platform whereby the veterans, the non-veterans as well as the organizations in collaborations gets closer to each other and forms a healthy relationship without the consideration of the distance between them and their size, and together they all are supportive, civically active and resilient. By this, the collaboration between the organizations and the veterans as well as the non-veterans gets strengthened. Technology enables quick informing across the whole collaboration team making it more effective and efficient.

Another way by which technology-based civic engagement with the veterans as well as the non-veterans may be used in enhancing the collaborative initiative is the direct support of the organizations and the citizen's participation in the collaboration. It is clear that digital tools help in empowering the citizens enabling them to actively play the role of shaping the collaborative initiative, the decision-making process of the organizations through the digital communication platforms. This way will help each organization play its role effectively to ensure that the collaboration goal has been achieved. This means that when each organization plays their role actively, the will at the end form a powerful bond to ensure that they work together to avoid failing the other organizations (Kranke, Floersch, & Dobalian, 2018). Every organization will work to maintain its name and role in the outside world; hence this way will enable enhancement of the collaborative initiative created.

Conclusion

Collaborators face different challenges in their effort to enact and develop a solid partnership with other partners, and some of these challenges may include inflexibility, different organization cultures, capacity and many more. Collaborators find it a challenge to create partnerships since most organization...