Coatesville VA and Mellon Certified Restoration Eager to Support Veterans

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The Coatesville VA and local employers like Mellon Certified Restoration offer a job toolbox that many veterans are missing out on. Above, Mellon Certified Restoration Branch Manage Shawn Hester talks jobs in front of a demonstration wall.--via Daily Local News, Pete Bannan.

A toolbox packed with everything a veteran needs to get back to work in civilian life awaits at the Coatesville VA Medical Center, but not many of America’s heroes even knows it exists.

And in Exton, that VA program has a strong ally in Mellon Certified Restoration, where numerous veterans’ lives have been restored as they work together to rehabilitate local homes and businesses destroyed by disasters like fire, smoke, wind and water.

“There’s a lot of companies that wouldn’t hire us because they are afraid we’re going to (freak) out on them,” Coatesville veteran and Mellon employee Patrick Nelson said in a Daily Local News feature by Brian McCullough. “I went from the bottom of the pits to the top.”

Once he found out about the VA’s Work Restoration Department, that is.

“It took me four or five years to hook up with the VA,” he said. “I thought it was more for the wounded. There are so many vets who don’t know about any of this.”

Work Restoration provides everything from vocational assessment to transitional work at Mellon and many other area employers, as well as employment development resources, job search assistance, incentive therapy and supported employment.

“It’s like a temp agency almost,” Program Manager Susan Wieser said in the article. “It was set up by an act of Congress to hook unemployed veterans up with employers. They work there temporarily with the idea of becoming a permanent employee.”

Read more about the Work Restoration program and Mellon’s success stories in the Daily Local News here.

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