The Army gave me a mission. EDC is what I'm building next.

I'm Damian, an Army veteran, student, and the founder of Esprit de Corps Foundation.

I joined the Army looking for something bigger than myself. What I found was more than a job. I found structure, responsibility, shared purpose, and the kind of relationships that come from knowing the people around you are counting on you.

When I left active service and returned to school at the University of Illinois Chicago, I started thinking more seriously about what happens when that environment changes. I met Roger through UIC Student Veterans Affairs, started talking with other veterans, service members, spouses, students, and people throughout Chicago, and kept hearing different versions of the same thing: people weren't only looking for resources. They were looking for connection, opportunity, purpose, and somewhere they still belonged.

Those conversations became Esprit de Corps Foundation.

What started as an idea has grown into a much bigger vision for what life after and alongside service can look like. We're building experiences that bring people together, opportunities that help them move forward, ways to continue serving their communities, support for the families beside them, and eventually a permanent home where all of those things can exist together.

I'm still a student. I'm still serving. And I'm still learning how to build this every day.

But I know what I want EDC to become: a community people can enter at one point in their lives and continue growing with for years afterward.

I S.E.R.V.E. because I know what it feels like to go looking for purpose.

The military gave me a mission, a team, responsibility, and people I knew I could count on. Leaving active service made me realize how easy it is for pieces of that to disappear when the uniform comes off.

I don't believe they have to.

I believe we can build a community where a veteran finds their next opportunity, a service member finds people outside their unit, a spouse builds a network of their own, a family feels included, a student finds a mentor, and someone who has never served can still find a meaningful way to stand beside those who have.

That's why I'm building EDC.

Not to recreate the military, but to carry forward some of what made service meaningful in the first place: belonging, responsibility, camaraderie, growth, and the expectation that when someone beside you needs a hand, you show up.

For me, S.E.R.V.E. isn't something we put on a wall. It's the standard for what we build and how we treat the people who trust us enough to be part of it.

I didn't start EDC because I thought Chicago needed another veterans organization.

I started it because I kept thinking about everything that makes people feel connected while they serve, and how difficult it can be to find that same combination of purpose, camaraderie, opportunity, family, and belonging afterward.

Then I started meeting other people who felt it too.

EDC grew from a simple question: what if we built a community designed to stay with people?

Through adventure. Through service. Through careers and education. Through marriage and family. Through hard seasons and great ones. Through whatever mission comes next.

We're still early. But that's what we're building.

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