By Ryan Young | Marketing and Communications Manager
Military MILE: Building Trust, Confidence, and Peer-to-Peer Leadership
In early November, Give an Hour’s Military MILE training brought together 20 early-career service members for three powerful days of in-person peer support education. Nearly all participants were in their first year of service, at a pivotal moment when leadership habits, stress responses, and help-seeking behaviors are still actively forming.
From the very first session, something important shifted. Instead of standing at the front of the room, facilitators Chris Garcia and Ana Mendes chose to sit alongside participants, breaking down power dynamics and creating space for authenticity. That simple choice changed everything. Soldiers spoke more freely, shared more deeply, and began engaging with one another not through rank or hierarchy, but through shared humanity.
Across the three days, attendance remained exceptionally strong (19 participants on Days 1 and 2, and 18 on Day 3). Engagement was high, and the training environment quickly became a place of openness, trust, and honest reflection.
What Changed
Participants entered the training at the very beginning of their peer-support journey. By the end, they showed measurable growth across nearly every skill area:
Openness in discussing mental health increased by 18.46%
Active listening improved by 8.07%
Stress tolerance rose by 7.98%
Encouraging dialogue through open-ended questions increased by 6.67%
Emotional regulation and boundary-setting also showed meaningful gains
Most powerful of all:
Every single participant rated the training as transformational.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): 100
Net Empowerment Score (NES): 100
Net Transformation Score (NTS): 100
There were zero detractors.
The Moment That Changed the Room
One of the most impactful experiences was the Brown Bag Activity, a reflective, anonymous exercise where participants wrote down a traumatic or life-altering experience, placed it into a bag, and then listened as another peer read it aloud without revealing the author.
As the cards were read, the room changed.
Participants offered condolences to peers without knowing who had written the card. They sat in silence together. They recognized grief, trauma, and fear in the words of someone sitting right beside them, sometimes someone they had never spoken to before. The exercise dismantled stigma in real time and replaced it with empathy.
One participant later shared:
“This program has given me the confidence to share with my peers and trust.”
What Participants Told Us
By the end of the training, soldiers described clear shifts in how they view both themselves and their peers:
“I feel like I can open up more and let people know what’s going on.”
“I learned that I need to check on my peers’ mental health more often.”
“My views have changed and made me realize this is a topic that needs to be talked about.”
“Never thought to talk about stuff like this in the military.”
“Someone may be going through the same thing but hasn’t built the courage to speak on it yet.”
These aren’t just reflections, they are early signs of a culture shift.
Who Was Reached
20 total participants
Ages 18–40 (average age: ~24)
95% in their first year of service
85% men, 15% women
Racially diverse group representing Black or African American, White, Hispanic/Latino/a/x, and multiracial participants
Multilingual community with English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Haitian Creole represented
This diversity matters. It reflects who today’s service members truly are and ensures peer support reaches across cultural, racial, and lived-experience differences.
What We Learned (and How We’re Improving)
This training didn’t just change participants, it strengthened the program itself. Key lessons now shaping future Military MILE sessions include:
Sitting with participants daily increases trust and depth of conversation
Small-group discussions lead to more vulnerability and honesty
The Brown Bag Activity deserves expanded time and trauma-response framing
Participants want more hands-on and physically engaging activities
Understanding why warning signs appear, not just what they are, deepens peer impact
These insights are already being integrated into upcoming trainings.
Why This Matters to Donors
This training didn’t just deliver information, it reshaped how young service members relate to themselves and one another. It built confidence to speak up. It built courage to ask questions. It built capacity to notice when a peer is struggling, and to respond with care.
When donors invest in Military MILE, they are funding:
Earlier detection of distress
Stronger peer-to-peer leadership
Reduced stigma around mental health
And a culture where asking for help becomes a strength, not a risk
This is how prevention begins, before crisis ever strikes.
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