Companies with a mission. Meet the man of honor who started Rags of Honor.

by | Apr 13, 2015 | Entrepreneurship

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People who see a problem and decide to do something about it are some of my most favorite people in the world. Mark Doyle is one of those people. Mark served over in Afghanistan as a private contractor doing forensic accounting and while he was there, he lived alongside the soldiers. He saw firsthand how hard they worked under the worst of conditions and had a huge amount of respect for them. He also saw that when they came back to the US, they were out of work and suicide rates were high*. One day he decided to start a company that would employ only veterans. That is the day he started Rags of Honor in Chicago in 2012.

Having admittedly no idea what he was doing, Doyle launched a silk-screening business called Rags of Honor, a company that would be staffed entirely by veterans. Using his own money and relying on equipment donations from a Chicago-area manufacturer, he rented a space and then went to a shelter for homeless veterans and rounded up people looking for work.

They didn’t know anything about silk-screening, and neither did Doyle. But they all figured it out. That was in 2012.

Now Rags of Honor employs seven veterans full time and two part time, with more to come this year. Most of them were homeless and struggling to find work.

Nicole Lahanis, vice president of sales and marketing, and a four-year Army veteran says, “I want to grow the business so we can hire more vets. I needed a mission. Now I have one.”

Beamon, the Army gunner, put it this way: “None of us had any experience in silk-screening. We didn’t know anything about how these shirts are made. But we were trained to work hard. We were trained to do our best. We were trained to adapt to any situation. So we did.”

If you want to support Rags of Honor, visit: ragsofhonor.us.

Read the entire article here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/careers/ct-biz-0413-work-advice-huppke-20150410-column.html

* Upon returning to civilian life, young veterans are committing suicide at an alarmingly high rate — nearly three times that of active-duty troops. According to new data released by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Thursday and obtained by USA Today, the suicide rate for male veterans aged 18-29 spiked nearly 44 percent between 2009 and 2011. For females, the rate increased more than 11 percent. In that same age group, the suicide toll for both men and women rose from 88 people in 2009 to 152 people in 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/10/young-veteran-suicide-doubles_n_4576846.html