Statement from the Former Board of Team Rubicon Global
By: The Former Board Of Trg
Tags: Veterans, Team Rubicon, Disaster Response, Military, Team Rubicon Global

An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted. One cannot resist an idea whose time has come. No one can resist an idea whose time has come. — Victor Hugo

Dear Team Rubicon Community,

Team Rubicon Global (TRG) has made the difficult decision to cease operations. While there’s more we’d hoped to accomplish together, we are extremely grateful for your support in helping us bring this idea to life. We’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we accomplished with your support, and how our original idea of sparking a movement of veteran-led disaster relief organizations around the world will live on.

Immediately following Hurricane Sandy, six Norwegian veterans flew from Oslo to New York to volunteer with Team Rubicon USA. All combat veterans of the war in Afghanistan, the Norwegians responded to a call to serve that many veterans feel when watching their friends and allies face national emergencies. Alongside teams of American veterans, the Norwegians mucked and gutted flooded homes in the Rockaways. In the evenings, over beers in a dimly lit Brooklyn bar, they challenged TR-USA’s leadership to think bigger about what TR could accomplish. They wanted to build a Team Rubicon of their own, they said.

Two years later TRG was created to export the model of veteran-led disaster relief to new countries. It was built as a global coalition with an important requirement — more non-American than American directors on the Board.

TRG went onto launch country units in Australia, Canada, Norway, and the UK — with those organizations still on the frontlines of today’s battle against COVID-19. In the UK, which has experienced the worst COVID crisis in Europe, British veterans are conducting mortuary affairs, staffing vaccine clinics, and distributing food. In Australia, still recovering from the worst bushfires in history, teams of Australian veterans are helping devastated communities rebuild. And in Norway, a team recently returned from an extended deployment to Beirut, Lebanon where it helped rebuild following the port explosion.

TRG was created to export the model of veteran-led disaster relief in a co-branded and networked model. It built on the comparative advantages of each member country, like historical relationships, language differences, and geographical proximity to disaster zones around the world. The network that TRG created worked together to solve some of the greatest natural disasters of our time. When the Nepal earthquake struck Kathmandu in 2015, a nascent Team Rubicon UK recruited former Nepalese Gurkhas to work alongside their American counterparts.

Thousands of veterans around the world have been given the opportunity to continue their service through the country units launched by TRG. And while it’s bittersweet to shut down TRG’s operations, it’s promising to know those country units will live on to serve humanity during its greatest time of need. We thank you, our community and supporters, for giving us the opportunity to create these organizations.

s/

The Former Board of Directors

March 15, 2021