My particular group does everything online. When we started this thing, we did not expect or intend to create this group. It emerged organically. A couple of us pushed out this message. Our third founder created a Facebook page, which within days in excess of 9,000 people flocked to, so we realized we had to run with it at this point.
The intent we initially set out to promote was to proactively go out. We said, “Hey, that dude who was in your platoon in Bosnia, or Croatia, or Afghanistan, the guy you haven't talked to in three years? Just call him up or shoot him an email or whatever, and just say, 'Hey, how are you doing?' ” Just open up a conversation.
We have a lot of veterans who have dropped off the radar, and they are suffering unbeknownst to anybody. Particularly in the military, and in my case the army reserve, we all scatter back to various bases and communities.
We don't have any structured, formal thing. We were never a structured or formal thing. It just seems to have helped anyway. We encourage people to just seek out the people they have been in touch with and find out how they are. That's on an ongoing basis, not one day a year—I'm not trying to pick on Bell—but every single day. When they say, “I'm doing okay”, but you don't think they are being completely forthright, you say, “No, how are you really doing?” Give them that opening to realize that okay, here's someone who is safe to talk to about the fact that this, that, or the other thing has been going on.