Afghanistan: A Soldier's Story

May Developments

Melanie — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:58:48 +0000

A lot of progress has been made in recent months. Publication has been moved to November 2014 in order to include the training mission. We have an excellent book intro from the CDS, viewable as a pdf at this site, and the promise of a second intro from Canadian Historian Dr. Jack Granatstein. MGen Vance has offered to write the afterward and apparently has some submissions he would like to make. LCol Ian Hope has agreed to write historical intros for each section, and LCol Mark Gasparotto has agreed to act as project Champion for CME (Canadian Military Engineers). We have also entered into a collaborative relationship with the producers of the documentary series “The Veterans” to include episodes of their 58 episode series (a mini film festival as it were) at presentations across Canada, and will be including a DVD of the episodes relevant to the Afghan Mission in the back of the book. We also have permission to use “Homefront” a CF documentary filmed here in Edmonton and in Afghanistan by Reel Girls Media Inc. in 2007. I am in discussion with the Edmonton MFRC with regards to a media event there in May or June to announce the new developments and encourage those who served to share their stories.

There has also been a change in my own status, as I have been posted, prior to retirement, to the Vancouver area, so will be looking to Grant Cree and Rachelle Foss to carry on with events, when possible, in the Edmonton area. Capt Magill will also help out until she posts out to Moose Jaw in June. I believe we have enough established at this point for folks to get proactive with the project in their own areas. And I strongly encourage any supporters of this project to get proactive. To have a successful book, no matter how many VIPs get involved at the top end, we must have the stories and images of those who served. That means I need YOUR help to make this project go viral. I have placed downloadable resources at the Media Kit page of the web site to support any presentations you might want to make in your respective areas. These will be updated and expanded as we move forward. I encourage you to put them to good use.

A suggestion for local area presentations is to stage a mini film festival, with clips from our Youtube Channel as well as “The Veterans” site. As more films become available I will put them at our Youtube Channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/ASoldiersStory

If you have the capacity to capture video footage on a handicam or your state-of-the-art cel phone you can even do on the spot interviews with those who served and upload them to our Youtube Channel. And have fun helping me take this viral! We need sumissions from those who served!

Many thanks.

Publication Date

Melanie — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:48:17 +0000

We had a meeting Sunday of a few key volunteers in the Edmonton area to address any possibility of a change in publication date. We’ve also had some feedback from Facebook and Linkedin discussions. While it was not a clear 100% consensus, the majority want to stay with the publicized November 2012 publication date with a submissions deadline of end July 2012. We did, however, also decide that it would be a good idea to maintain the web blog past publication and continue to accept submissions. If there is sufficient CF and public interest (and additional submissions) and book sales of the 2012 publication require a second printing, we can then go to a second “revised” edition, or even an e-book, for Nov 2014, which would include all subsequent submissions and a distinct section dedicated to the training mission. This option also supports healthy, sustained engagement with cross-platform social media that is not dependent on a traditional publication.

Publication Date

Melanie — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:17:15 +0000

There is currently discussion of deferring publication until 2014 so we can include submissions from the training mission as well as from the newly launched Veterans Art Project. There are pros and cons to a later publishing date, but so far the advantages appear to out way the disadvantages.

The primary advantage to publishing this year, beyond the fact that this was the original intent, is the desire to see the book completed and published.

Publishing in 2014 allows us to gather more input and make the publication more representative. An initiative like this takes time to catch hold, as it were, and many who served in the earlier years will be hard to reach within the next five months. To publish in 2012, we must have ALL submissions in by early July.

Publishing in 2014 will do more than support a more inclusive legacy album. It will also allow us to develop a more robust, cross-platform, marketing approach that can benefit from the media hype that will accompany the end of the training mission as the end of Canadian military invovement in Afghanistan.

Unless folks can present strong counter arguments to these advantages to a later publishing date, we are inclined to go that route. In addition to strong arguments, we would also need to see far more proactive advocacy on the part of those anxious to publish early. Don’t just sit on the sidelines and watch content grow. Share your own stories and images. Encourage submissions from your buddies who served. Help us reach out to Afghan Veterans from the early years of the mission. Without the early stories the book will be incomplete.

Stories don’t have to be complicated or big news items either. We are looking for the human reflections of the day to day experiences in the Canadian Afghan Mission. Simple, personal moments and insights. And these moments need not be those you wrote in the heat of things. They can also be reflections made today, looking back. This is your story. Help us to tell it.

February/March Update

Melanie — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:26:47 +0000

The Project:

First, a reminder on a few points.

“Afghanistan: A Soldier’s Story” is not a DND project. Instead it is a volunteer, not for profit project, in partnership the Edmonton MFRC.

The mission is to develop a legacy coffee table style book chronicling the 10 years Canada has been engaged in the Afghanistan conflict. We do not intend to create another academic dissection of the conflict or present the mission from the polished perspective of a professional writer. It is our objective, instead, to gather the stories and photos, your stories and photos, that capture the honest reflections, insights, and pivotal experiences of those who served.

Why you should get involved:

Help us share with Canadians the human face of the Afghan Mission, the insights and reflections of the Boots on the Ground who represented Canada and Canadian values so well in Afghanistan. Don’t leave these recollections to fade until some graduate student of Canadian Military History or a junior archivist from the Military Museum calls you up 30 years from now to ask for your story. It is not enough for Canadians to remember their military once a year on Remembrance Day. Our military is best served when it is a part of the day to day identity of Canada and Canadians.

For those who served:

Whether you deployed as a member of the Canadian Forces, as a civilian, or embedded with our troops as media, you each have a unique personal perspective worth sharing with Canadians. Why? Because many Canadians still struggle to understand why we were there. Because Canadians tend to turn away from their military when the conflict is past confident the soldiers, sailors and air men and women will be there, ready, when the next conflict presents. This legacy album is an opportunity to provide a better understand of and appreciation for the extraordinary work done by ordinary serving Canadians.

For the friends and families of those who served:

We would like to provide the children, partners, parents and siblings of those who served with a legacy album all would be proud to share, to show off, at school, at work, and in your homes. We want to make it easy for you to say with pride, “look what my Dad, Mom, partner, kid, did”

For the media who embedded with our troops:

You put yourselves at risk, alongside our soldiers, in order to bring home to Canadians a taste of the conflict. Perhaps not all of your stories and images were published. Perhaps you have never had an opportunity to share with Canadians the human face of the Canadian Afghan Mission. Now you can.

The Web Site www.afghanistanacanadianstory.ca

The volunteers on the project have created this web blog so you can share your stories and images, feedback on the project, and watch it as it unfolds. Submissions started to come in after the project launch in November 2011 but many of you appear to be pretty shy about sharing your experiences. We have 200 pages to fill folks! To make it easier, we have borrowed images and captions from Combat Camera from 2002 through to 2012. Who knows, perhaps your picture is already at the site? Have a look. We’ve also included a news timeline, borrowed from the National Post, so that you can better place your own stories within the context of the greater events happening around your individual experiences.

Facebook:

We have established a Facebook Group http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Afghanistan-A-Soldiers-Story/310244442351004 and encourage you to “like” the project, “share” the project, and contribute your ideas, suggestions and even submissions to help make this book a reality. Help us make it go viral!

Youtube:

We have established a Youtube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/ASoldiersStory and encourage you to help us build a collection of video clips here. Either by sharing your favourites or uploading your own. There is a documentary filmmaker currently interested in compiling video submissions into a film about the human face of the Canadian Afghan Combat Mission.

Linkedin:

We have created a group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4256579&trk=hb_side_g where you can discuss the project, pass it along, and help to gather the stories and images essential to a successful publication.

Flicker:

We have created a group here too http://www.flickr.com/groups/canafghanstory/ so that it is easier for you to share your photos and videos.

Contact Us:

Share the web site www.afghanistanacanadianstory.ca and drop us an email contact@afghanistanacanadianstory.ca

We need your input, through feedback, stories, images, and video clips in order to build this worthwhile publication. Proceeds will be shared through the Edmonton MFRC with Boomers Legacy, the Military Families Fund, and the Soldier On Fund.

French and English Submissions

Melanie — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:05:09 +0000

We have, thanks to the kindness of the Edmonton MFRC, been able to put our submission invitation on the welcome page in English and French. The book will not be bilingual (unless someone either volunteers to translate it for free or is prepared to fund a full translation) but it will be published in the languages of submissions. That means if a story or video is submitted in French, it will be validated and edited, if and as necessary, in French, and published in French. The same will apply to English submissions. The book will be bilingual in so far as it will publish submissions in their original language.

So, where are the submissions? Shy about uploading? email your submissions to contact@afghanistanacanadianstory.ca or consult@mywrdwrx.com

Many thanks

Melanie, Project Coordinator

Priming the pump

Melanie — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:20:57 +0000

Well the early start on submissions was gratifying, but short lived. I fully respect that for many, their involvement in the Afghan Mission is either too difficult to share or you don’t see it as anything more than just doing your job. Canadians, however, know very little about what that job can entail. The Canadian military has, historically, fallen from public view shortly after distinguishing itself in one conflict or another. The human stories usually don’t come to light until decades later. Please help to ensure that this time it will be different.

I have added historical timelines, courtesy of the National Post Afghanistan TImelines http://afghanistan.nationalpost.com/category/timelines/ to provide you all with a news context for your involvement. I have also added a page of Canadian Casualties, as I would like to see the Families of the Fallen share some of the human stories on behalf of their Fallen Soldier.

I started to borrow content, by year, from Combat Camera, http://www.combatcamera.forces.gc.ca/site/index-eng.asp , to prime the pump and provide an example of a good caption, but for some reason, as of 22 January, a video search for afghanistan images by year only turns up photos from 2011 and 2012.

Many of you have expressed enthusiastic support for this project but I have yet to see a submission from any of you. You KNOW who you are.

Many thanks.

Melanie

Submissions are beginning to come in

Melanie — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:46:09 +0000

Submissions are beginning to come in. Thanks to all to have gottent things moving on that front. The site is currently set up as a blog, but our volunteer web team met yesterday to discuss the requirements of a secure, user friendly web site. Right now, there is no straightforward process for uploading stories, images and video clips. The plan is to have a more robust web site in place early in the new year. (Our volunteer web team is almost complete. What we really need to complete the team is someone who can write code, or a donation of funding to hire someone to write the code for the site.)

What does this mean?

Well for starters, in order to register at the site, you will soon be required to complete certain fields in your profile so we know who you are. For those of you who have already registered but have incomplete profiles, I encourage you to return and complete your profile. When the site is rebuilt, incomplete profiles will be deleted.

The pages for specific types of submissions, once we migrate to a real web site, will be able to provide a more robust, one stop portal as it were, where you can upload text, graphics, large image and video files. Submissions, as they come in, will go into a data base acessible to our volunteer administrators. At the same time, submissions wil be retreived from the site and entered into an excel data base for subsequent sorting, editing and follow up with submittors when there is incomplete information.

In order to protect the integrity and validity of the entire finished product, we need specific information from those of you who submit for sorting, cross referencing, and validation. It’s also important to know the deployment dates of all submissions so they can be incorporatedaccurately into the time line of the final publication. This means that each submission page will have specific fields of information that must be filled in before you can submit your written, graphic, photographic or video submission. This information is essential for project volunteers working on building the final publication. Without it a submission cannot be accepted for publication.

At the end of the day, if you are contributing to this publication, we want to ensure that your submission is part of an honest and inclusive representation of the Canadian Afghan Mission, free of fabricated accounts by ”wanna be” soldiers and civilians who never served.

Many thanks

Melanie, Project Coordinator