Project Founder Paula J. Caplan's Brief Story about Listen to a Veteran!
Feel free to print LTAV! flyer from here. 
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Listen to a Veteran! project (501(c)3 VIDCAPT)
  • Reduces the common chasms between veterans and nonveterans through the simple act of one nonveteran listening to a veteran from any era 
  • Free, voluntary, completely private and respectful listening sessions
  • No recordings of any type 
  • Helping veterans through the power of human connection
  • ​Order new paperback edition of awardwinning book, ​When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans.  
  • Listeners are not therapists, and – except for speaking two sentences – they truly do nothing but listen. However, they do so with 100% of their attention and their whole hearts. This model works beautifully: Harvard University research has shown that veterans describe this as helpful, and the listeners say it is wonderfully transformative for them. This is about human connection through the often overlooked but astonishing power of listening.[1] Regardless of the veteran’s politics and the listener’s politics, the sessions are helpful. A few examples: (1) A Viet Nam War veteran who had long been suicidal stopped thinking of suicide and focused on the future after just one of our sessions; (2) After two Listen to a Veteran sessions, a recent veteran who was attending a college that did not have the program he wanted felt so energized that he applied for and got a full scholarship to the university he longed to attend; (3) A victim of military sexual trauma who thought she had "done all the talking about it that I needed to do" to therapists and family members over the years found that after her Listen to a Veteran session she felt more lighthearted than before; and (5) The typical response from a nonveteran after listening to a veteran is that it unexpectedly and powerfully led, through hearing the veteran's experiences and seeing their humanity, to recognizing more of their own humanity as well.
  • You can become involved by doing one or more sessions, by helping organize others to get involved, or both; by organizing a screening of our "Is Anybody Listening?" film; by helping get our "Listen to a Veteran!" Public Service Announcements widely seen; or by raising funds to help promote the Project.
    Thank you for your interest in this work!
Testimonials from Veterans Who Had Listening Sessions
Why Veterans Do Our Listening Sessions

  • Another way to serve by educating nonveterans about military experiences
  • Connect with a nonveteran in their wider community
  • Speak privately about things so far unspoken and thus more painful
  • Ease some of the burden on loved ones
Why Nonveterans Volunteer to Be Listeners

  • Civic duty to learn what those in the military experience
  • Help reduce a veteran's isolation from their wider community
  • Bear witness and share grief when a veteran wishes to speak of painful things
Heartfelt, powerful, quick, low-cost way to show support for veterans and the Listen to a Veteran! project... 

Make a tax-deductible donation of $25 or more, and receive the DVD of our film, "Is Anybody Listening?" for your individual, home use. For instructions on how to make the donation, please write to us at www.listentoaveteran.org/contact.html

The Listening Session Guide

Click here for the official Listening Session Guide.
"When I came back from Afghanistan, hearing the words “Thank You” from people who didn’t know what I did or saw was an empty gesture. More than anything, I wanted my community to listen to the stories of veterans like myself—to participate in that moral struggle, and gain a deeper awareness of the meaning of war. The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project understands the important role that civilians can perform simply by listening to veterans actively and without judgment, generating new opportunities for veterans to serve their communities by educating them about the nuanced reality of war." 
- Brock McIntosh, Afghanistan veteran (U.S. Army) 
A nonveteran who listened to a veteran's story in The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project said,"I decided to do this to try to help a veteran, and the veteran I listened to said it did help. What I had not expected was the powerfully positive effect that the listening had on me. My politics are very different from the veteran's but that was irrelevant. This was about human connection. By listening to what this veteran had been through in the military and then after coming home, I learned about their humanity but also about my own. I was inspired by the person's integrity and honesty and the courage in speaking so openly to me."


A veteran who participated in a listening session said: 
"It was helpful to talk without judging or interruption.  It was good to not have to keep justifying and defending my words, my actions, my experiences."
Veterans told us they appreciated being able to speak without being interrupted with questions about military terminology or anything else. One valued talking to someone who appeared genuinely interested, without worrying about either confusing the listener or being judged. Another was relieved not to have to "package stories" or omit “personally important or interesting aspects." 
A veteran from Iraq and Afghanistan described feeling able to “ramble and jump back and forth” in a way that “made sense in my own mind,” making it possible to go freely through a range of emotions from the past, which is rare in other settings, where there is either less time or a specific purpose for the session determined by someone else. By contrast, The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home session made it possible to speak about anything, “without needing to come to a specific conclusion or point,” and this felt “freeing.”

A Special Message to Project Supporters:

Being moved is important. Committed action helps even more. Your moral support and spreading of the word about The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project to connect veterans and nonveterans have been great!  We'd love 5 minutes of your time now, because wonderful work has been done -- nonveterans listening to veterans from Rhode Island to California, from Maine to Indiana to New Mexico -- and we are gearing up for more! To help the Project grow, please do one or more of the following:   

1.      Tell 3 other people -- veterans and nonveterans -- about the Project and the benefits of the listening sessions. Refer them to listentoaveteran.org
2.      Please post this far and wide!
3.      Donate $5 to support the Project at www.gofundme.com/listen2veterans  Contributions of just $5 will support the following:
· Increasing outreach with electronic and printed brochures about the Project.
· Professional website updates to include a forum, which will support and connect veterans and volunteers.
· T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers reading "Listen to a veteran," given as gifts to veterans and volunteers and available for purchase by others to help spread awareness about the Project. 
Frequently Asked Questions

View the Frequently Asked Questions about The LTAV Project.

The Project Spreads Across the Land!

--Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee issues proclamation for days of listening to veterans
--Colin Powell and Sebastian Junger on Memorial Day weekend 2014 urge nonveterans to listen to veterans
--Nonveterans more than 30 states are volunteering to listen to veterans' stories, and veterans are requesting the listening sessions
--Great article about our project in Ohio
--Paula's article in June/July 2014 issue of VFW Magazine draws responses from all over the country
To spread the word about the Project, please feel free to print the flyer near the top of this page, and share it
  • On local community bulletin boards
  • At Veterans' organizations
  • In newsletters and on websites and Facebook pages of civic, social, political, or faith-based groups
How Else Can I Help Vets and Their Families?
This playlist contains more than two dozen five-minute videos, each one a description of a different way that any citizen can help veterans and their families heal. All of these approaches are nonpathologizing (do not involve diagnosing anyone as mentally ill but rather are based on the assumption that human suffering is not always mental illness but that those who suffer deserve help from all of us in the wider community). That material about these approaches has been sent, on request, to many people in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, as well as to a wide range of organizations.

The videos were made at A Better Welcome Home: Transformative Models to Support Veterans and Their Families, a conference held at the Ash Center on November 2, 2011. For more information about how to help, please contact the specific organizations (contact info included below each video). The information presented in this playlist does not necessarily represent the views of the Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School, or Harvard University.

Listening Session Questionnaires

We encourage veterans and nonveterans who have completed a listening session to fill out these confidential questionnaires to give us feedback about your session.
Questionnaire - Immediately After Session
Listening Session Questionnaire - To be completed immediately after your listening session. Your responses will never be used publicly in connection with your name or information that would reveal your identity. The purpose of these questions is to allow us to track and understand how the sessions affect people.
Questionnaire - One Month After Session
Listening Session Questionnaire - To be completed one month after your listening session. Your responses will never be used publicly in connection with your name or information that would reveal your identity. The purpose of these questions is to allow us to track and understand how the sessions affect people.
To Contact the Listen to a Veteran! Project, ask questions, offer to promote the Project in your area, arrange for a film screening, spread the word about our Public Service Announcements, or help raise funds to promote the work further, go to http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/contact.html

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"Listen to a Veteran!" Public Service Announcement series has won a Bronze Telly Award! Watch the PSAs at this website on the "Listen to a Veteran! PSAs" page.

"Is Anybody Listening?" film

For information about awardwinning documentary film "Is Anybody Listening?", please click here.
To see trailer of "Is Anybody Listening?" film, click here
"Is Anybody Listening?" the song

"Is Anybody Listening?" (theme song of the Listen to a Veteran! Project") @2014 lyrics by Paula Joan Caplan & Patricia Lee Stotter, music by Patricia Lee Stotter and Tim Leitch.  To hear it, click here.
Alert: 
The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project is not and will never in any way be associated with Scientology or its "Citizens Commission on Human Rights." Any attempt on the part of anyone associated with or speaking for any of these entities who claims that Dr. Caplan or the WJJHProject is connected with them is wrong and making an unauthorized and unwarranted claim.