What is Operation: Military Kids?

Operation: Military Kids (OMK) is the U.S. Army's collaborative effort with America's communities to support the children and youth impacted by deployment. This initiative was officially launched in April 2005. Since its inception, OMK has touched 88,000 military youth and provided information to 21,009 community members across the United States.

In Michigan, Operation: Military Kids is an ongoing community support system for families, particularly children of parents in the National Guard and the Army Reserves. It provides an outlet with recreational, educational and social opportunities for military youth, which helps them to deal with their parents being in a risky atmosphere. Many children in Michigan have one and sometimes both parents called into action who can be gone from one to eighteen months.

OMK is a 4-H program, which joins with the school and community to educate the public about what military children may be experiencing.

What Does Operation: Military Kids (OMK) provide?

Michigan OMK’s mission is to build community partnerships to increase capacity for youth, families and communities to support youth of military families.

We are reaching out to youth and military families through educational programming such as:

• Ready, Set, Go! Training: comprehensive training toolkit designed to educate youth workers, educators, counselors and other community service agencies on military culture, the deployment cycle, fostering resilience in kids, influence of the media, and building community capacity.
• Speak Out for Military Kids (SOMK): a community service opportunity for OMK State Teams to train military and non-military youth to establish Speakers Bureaus to advocate for military-connected youth affected by deployment.
• Hero Packs filled with fun items to help keep kids connected
• Mobile Tech Lab (MTL) connecting deployed parents to families through greeting cards and related items
• Camps for military youth and teens, Purple Camps, Yellow Ribbon and others

April is Month of the Military Child

Throughout the state, appreciation events are held to honor and recognized military youth and their families for their service and dedication.

Click here for event information

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