I have just started a charity up called Veterans International Aid to help ex service personnel adjust to civilian life after serving on operational duties.

We are planning to take ex service personnel on adventurous expeditions to help them adjust by using the skills they learned in the Forces to help the people we come in contact with.

L/Cpl Beharry's incident of fighting in the street is very common amongst ex service personnel. They feel isolated and unable to talk to civilians about their experiences and feel they don't fit into civilian life.

They miss the camaraderie of the daily Forces life, the banter and the friendships.

Even after leaving the Forces, we never really become civilians, just ex Forces. I was in the Army myself, and the Army take great pains in teaching you how not to be a civilian and to work as part of a team.

They don't then teach you how to become a civilian at the end of your service.

Many of the injured whether it be through battlefield injuries or normal rigours of the job injuries, have to leave the services early through no choice of their own.

That leaves a massive void in their lives that they find hard to fill. The Forces are very social and everything revolves around doing things together.

Once you take that structure away, they find it hard to fit in.

This is what VIA intends to help with.

We are planning our first expedition, which is an overland expedition around the coastline of Africa.

We plan to leave at the end of 2010 depending on the funding we receive and political situations. We will leave the UK and travel through France and Spain, then cross to Morocco.

From there we will follow the coastline, where possible down the west coast of Africa. Upon reaching Cameroon, we will team up with the charity Drive Against Malaria and help distribute mosquito nets in remote areas of the country.

We will also be looking for other tasks to do on the way or arrange before we go.

The idea of helping with aid work around the continent is to get our ex service personnel to help themselves by helping others.

It's the kind of jobs that the British military used to do all the time but because of limited manpower and too many commitments, our forces get less chance to do these days.

Our Forces accumulate so many skills during their service, most never use them again after leaving but it is such a waste as these skills can be used throughout the world to help others.

L/Cpl Beharry would be the ideal person to be involved in our expedition and I hope this can be passed on to him.

If anyone would like to contact me about VIA or the expedition you can email me on www.billymacleod@hotmail.com

http://www.veterans-uk.info/vets_badge/vets_badge.htm

'm an ex Royal Engineer who has just started a charity to help ex service personnel adjust to civvie street. If you go on to our website you can read about what we are trying to do. www.v-i-a.org.uk
To coincide with Armed Forces Day in June VIA and our partner charity Talking2Minds, also run by ex Royal Engineers are taking 8 veterans who are suffering with PTSD for treatment using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
This is a new way to treat PTSD but with tremendous results and Talking2Minds currently has 400 veterans awaiting this treatment with numbers increasing every day.
VIA is the second stage of this treatment. We plan to take veterans who have been treated for the sympoms of PTSD on expeditions where we plan to use the skills the veterans already possess from their military service to do aid work in the places we go and for the people we meet on our travels.
It would be great if we could get something on your site to promote what we are trying to achieve.

Billy MacLeod

Veterans International Aid

Personally and with due to respect to these "discount cards" I'm a bit wary of businesses doing these things. Charging these kinds of fees for membership, when other organisations do the same for nothing, is a bit off. Veterans have already earned their discounts and the business community should know this. Possibly the RBL or MOD/SPVA are better or safer options. Then again, who the fweck am I to comment?

Originally Posted by oldbaldy

As far as I am aware there is no time criteria. Turn up and collect a badge.

I read somwhere it was

one day after training for ex regs

one year after training for TA

not sure but it just sticks in my mind

Originally Posted by Conductor

Can't belive that my lad has done 5 years as an Office (he is 27 years old) and has a verterans badge. What is the minimum requirement to become a vet?

"To promote recognition of veterans by the wider British public the unique and unifying symbol of the HM Armed Forces Veterans Badge is available to all those who have served in HM Armed Forces.
The HM Armed Forces Veterans’ Lapel Badge was launched in May 2004 by the Minister for Veterans, to raise the profile of veterans by assisting the wider public to recognise them." Because they got off their arrses basically :D

Hi I am getting MD'd from the army and i want to know how much pension i'll be getting. Can anyone help???

Originally Posted by Hammy559

Hi I am getting MD'd from the army and i want to know how much pension i'll be getting. Can anyone help???

All depends on how much disability you have.

Originally Posted by Conductor

Can't belive that my lad has done 5 years as an Office (he is 27 years old) and has a verterans badge. What is the minimum requirement to become a vet?

What type of office was he? :D I do hope he was adventure training and not pay..... better class of office

hh

I guess im now in the right place ,i wanted to tell people about Action For Armed Forces

Non profit,not a charity either ,these guys have done loads for the armed forces but they were subject to a media blackout because the goverment new people would go mad!!

they chained themselves to buckingham palace and alsorts!!

i dont know much about them myself so i cant give a big write up but this is there website http://www.actionforarmedforces.com

bill
Kent buffs