The 13 Stanford students are spending their spring break traveling around Los Angeles and San Diego. But they’re not hanging out in bars or on the beach. They’re learning about the local services provided to veterans.
Junior Vineet Singal helped organize the trip. His group visits vet’s organizations by day. Tonight they’re helping San Diego Veterans For Peace hand out sleeping bags to homeless veterans. He said Southern California was the perfect place to see what services are being offered by cities.
“We have a large veteran population in these two cities,” he said. “For example, San Diego contains the naval base and several organizations like San Diego Veterans for Peace.”
Singal said trips to Washington D.C. showed him how veteran’s issues are considered on the national level. This trip is meant to show the group what cities are doing to help vets.
“We have so much that we owe them. And yet there are so many problems that exist in the status quo that are just so apparent, namely homelessness and mental health issues, amongst veterans,” he said.
But the group isn’t totally foregoing the typical spring break experience. Singal said there will be some free time so the students can recover from an intense quarter at school and rest up for the rest of the year
