Pamlico Rose Institute for Sustainable Communities

Through its program of wellness and resilience-building, Pamlico Rose offers an integrated approach, Total Life Fitness (TLF), modeled on the Department of Defense’s Total Force Fitness and the Department of Veteran Affairs’ evolving patient-driven Whole Health Initiative to serving female Veterans. Female Veterans as a population have the fastest rising suicide rate in Veteran populations. TLF helps mitigate the risk factors that are comorbid with suicide while strengthening protective factors that aid prevention. TLF involves meaningful and persistent attention to daily activities and events, such as healthy eating and cooking, yoga, gardening, creative expression, and movement through nature and uses interpersonal skills to build and engage a supportive community. Living fit also utilizes behavioral skills such as anxiety management and mindfulness to manage stress and uncertainty. Finally, TLF includes self-transcendence – connecting to others, a cause or beliefs beyond self – as an important element in healthy living. Our multifaceted approach considers social and institutional impediments affecting female Veterans and offers a learning experience staffed by experts in safe and non-threatening learning environment.

Using Total Life Fitness, Pamlico Rose is easing the difficulties that female Veterans face at all stages of transition and reintegration through a variety of programs. Our organization is working to fill gaps in the VA’s services offered to female Veterans that currently exist. Pamlico Rose is currently working with the VA’s Office of Suicide Prevention in order to provide resources to Veterans.

Lastly Pamlico Rose has built the Rose Haven Center for Healing that is dedicated to serving female Veterans. The Rose Haven Center of Healing is in Washington, NC’s historic district and is comprised of half a neighborhood block of healing and therapeutic gardens, a rehabilitated 1892 farmhouse and an adjacent barn. The Center houses many of the TLF programs and offers a safe and non-threatening space for female Veterans.

Total Life Fitness Retreats: Three-day reintegration retreats free of charge to female Veterans (including lodging and meals) introducing TLF and providing awareness through learning events and wellness activities. Annual program consists of 4-6 retreats with some introductory and others activity-themed (art, gardening, woodworking), all offered at the Rose Haven Center of Healing.

Residential Program: 8-12-week residential TLF Reintegration and Resilience (R&R) experience for female Veterans in latter stages of recovery from substance abuse. A cohort of four female Veterans will reside in the Haven House and participate in a formal program providing opportunity to engage fully in the benefits of living fit. They will help maintain the gardens, take part in daily mindful and transcendent activities, share meal preparation for dinners following TLF nutritional guidelines, volunteer a set number of hours with local nonprofits, and be involved in a weekly hybrid TLF course. Residents will continue personal counseling and therapy while at Rose Haven through the local VA or local social service agencies and will be expected to remain alcohol and/or drug free while in residence.

TLF Hybrid Course - Pamlico Rose, in partnership with Beaufort County Community College (BCCC), offers a hybrid three-month “extended” TLF online course, “Principles and skills that promote individual and organizational Wellness and Resilience”. The course is designed as a hybrid learning event that offers robust and comprehensive treatment and exploration of TLF beneficial to personal and professional development and a continued opportunity for community development for the participants. It will have a pre and post modular component to augment “course” objectives and extend learning to up to 12 weeks through Bloom’s application stage. The course will utilize BCCC’s Blackboard web platform, offered through their Community Learning Program. The March 6-8 retreat is the first to feature the use of Blackboard as a course resource and allows a post-retreat space for continued informal guided learning.

Higher Ed Reintegration Course - Pamlico Rose is also exploring the development and design of a “reintegration” course for Veterans thinking about or having enrolled in community college or 4-year college or university after leaving the military. The course would be a modular, online and asynchronous in delivery and would cover a variety of topics that impact the academic success of Veteran students; learning styles, social and interpersonal skills, writing, healthy living while a student, mitigating stress from academic expectations and more. Although some variations of this course might exist for Veteran students who attend 4-year school, this course is less likely if at all to be available at the community college level where such a course might prove to most beneficial to incoming Veteran students.

The pilot Total Life Fitness Retreat took place in October of 2019, followed by a second retreat in March of 2020. The evidenced-based Retreat program has a formal curriculum and schedule developed by a cadre of experts, many of which form the faculty for our TLF learning programs. Currently Pamlico Rose is developing an online program in partnership with Beaufort County Community College. The multi-month Reintegration and Resilience residential program for female Veterans in the latter stages of recovery from substance misuse is set to begin in early 2021. after the completion of the Rose Haven house. Currently the house is under construction, it will be completed in the summer of 2020, the healing gardens have been a major component in the previous two retreats.

Pamlico Rose owes its current success to a dedicated all volunteer staff, committed Board of Directors, groups of experts, and community members. Pamlico Rose is partnering with AmeriCorps to build the organization’s capacity, and organizations such as East Carolina Veteran Coalition, Disabled American Veterans, and the local community art counsel and many other local and Veteran organizations help to implement its programs.

Thus far Pamlico Rose has hosted two Total Life Fitness retreats, in doing so we are refining the TLF program and ready to host many more in the future. Each participant who has passed through the TLF retreat program has been asked to complete a satisfaction survey which we have used to continue to adapt the program to participant’s needs. The retreat program is being used as a stepping stone to grow Pamlico Rose’s the residential program, both are based on the principles of Total Life Fitness and being designed for the benefit of female Veterans, therefor the structure, staff, and learning material are all exportable to the residential program design. One of Pamlico Rose’s next steps is to host the first residential program.

Pamlico Rose’s online programing is also currently under development both as a stand-alone course and a follow-up course that will directly follow the retreat program. Pamlico Rose is partnering with Beaufort County Community College in order to develop the course which will be released in the near future.

Construction on the Rose Haven House is near completion. after its grand opening, Pamlico Rose will have even more opportunity for growth. The Rose Haven Center of Healing’s garden, home and barn will all host programing and events for the community and for Veterans to come together. The house will be completed in the summer of 2020.