August 1, 2012 (Denver, Colorado) – Soldiers to Summits (S2S) helps disabled veterans shatter personal barriers and reclaim lives by using mountaineering as the learning tool for setting ambitious goals, building world-class teams, innovating through obstacles, and stepping up to lead and serve others. For the S2S program, the mountains serve as the metaphor and training ground for helping to restructure how to deal with a certain past and uncertain future, while integrating with the existing rehab process. Aside from the obvious challenges of a bad economy, injuries, and stress – a lot of the Vets we talk to mention the loss of purpose, sense of teamwork, and lack of mission as further difficulties they face when leaving active service. S2S has the goal of helping to provide opportunities to regain these important aspects of a meaningful life.
As with most programs of this ambitious nature, it takes funding and awareness to make them possible. The good news is that there are a lot of great organizations dedicated to helping Vets adjust to the return to their lives. The “bad” news is that as the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down (well, of course that is good news…), the challenges these brave men and women face in their return home moves away from the “center of the radar” of our consciousness. We have a duty to keep this cause at the center.
Summit of Everest Group wanted to help so we helped to devise a social media strategy to raise awareness of S2S. For a two week period of time, we challenged the existing supporters of S2S to spread the message that Summit of Everest Group would donate funding for every new Facebook “Like” that the S2S page received. We are pleased to announce that in just two weeks, the awareness of S2S in the social media world has nearly doubled! Even more important than the funding, this increased awareness can become “viral” in that exponential growth curves can be achieved as additional sponsors expand the challenge to more and more people. As awareness increases, the ability for organizations like S2S to support Vets increases.
And that is a winning strategy…