Absolutely.
The Shoulder to Shoulder program is a national initiative that was born out of a wonderful initiative that started in the Edmonton area. It started out as something called the memorial cross network, when Edmonton was particularly hard hit back in 2006. Family members got together in an informal peer support, social networking piece. It was so successful that we said, “Can we not do something to take this nationally?”
We worked with chaplains and the HOPE network we had in place. We put some structure around it through the web-based consultation and the joint personnel support units, as enablers and facilitators. We pulled together some component parts, put a banner on them called Shoulder to Shoulder, and launched it. Part of it is marketing to get the word out to make sure that people know we have something in place to help people who have gone through terrible experiences.