USA — DOD Website Helps Young People Plan Futures

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2010 — A new Defense Depart­ment web­site gives mil­i­tary ser­vice equal billing with col­leges and careers for peo­ple ages 16 to 24 who are explor­ing options for their futures, the pro­gram direc­tor said yes­ter­day.

DOD’s Joint Adver­tis­ing Mar­ket Research and Stud­ies pro­gram announced the launch of Myfuture.com, which has infor­ma­tion on more than 1,000 mil­i­tary and civil­ian careers and near­ly 7,000 accred­it­ed col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties and trade schools, Matt Boehmer told the Pen­ta­gon Chan­nel and Amer­i­can Forces Press Service. 

“The pro­por­tion of youth who tell us they’ve nev­er con­sid­ered the mil­i­tary is at the high­est rate we’ve ever seen,” Boehmer said, not­ing that tra­di­tion­al col­lege- and career-plan­ning web­sites rarely offer infor­ma­tion about mil­i­tary service. 

“The Myfuture.com web­site aims not only to inform but to inter­est youth who may nev­er have con­sid­ered mil­i­tary ser­vice,” he said. 

The web­site is a cen­tral resource for infor­ma­tion on col­lege admis­sion require­ments, employ­ment trends and mil­i­tary ben­e­fits, Boehmer added. It pro­vides advice about prepar­ing aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly for col­lege, land­ing a first job inter­view and prepar­ing for mil­i­tary basic training. 

“By plac­ing the mil­i­tary side by side with col­lege and career oppor­tu­ni­ties, the web­site allows them to explore all pos­si­bil­i­ties and gain insight into each option,” Boehmer said. “We also make the point that the three do not have to be mutu­al­ly exclusive.” 

DOD pro­duces the site using data from the depart­ments of Com­merce, Edu­ca­tion and Labor. 

The web­site is being adver­tised on social media sites such as Face­book, Twit­ter and YouTube, Boehmer said. The YouTube site fea­tures two songs writ­ten for Myfuture.com and per­formed by Brook­lyn rap­per DeStorm Power. 

“We need to go out where the kids are, and that today is social media,” Boehmer said. “Instead of hav­ing them come to us, what we’ve decid­ed to do is go to them and engage the youth in their own environment.” 

Myfuture.com has been live for sev­er­al months, he said, and the num­ber of users has risen steadi­ly. The mil­i­tary infor­ma­tion pages have had 100,000 page views so far, and more than 3,000 vis­i­tors have cre­at­ed accounts on the website. 

“Even though the site has only been up for a short time,” Boehmer said, “we feel those are great signs of success.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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