Servicemembers Tell All About Iraq and Afghanistan in Poignant New Series

From Brave New Foundation's Jim Miller:

Last summer I got a call from someone who had seen some of our past work. She started off being extremely complimentary about the issues we were bringing to light, marveling at how widely we were able to distribute our short videos to not only inform, but to motivate viewers to take action. She then asked if Brave New Foundation would be interested in taking on a large project to help amplify the stories of a group of Americans whose efforts and sacrifices weren't being acknowledged. She warned me that it would be a difficult task since it only directly affected less than 1% of the US population.

Being a bit headstrong (even in my middle age), I said that no task was too difficult. If there is an injustice, we could tackle it and help to make it right! But what she wanted was difficult. The task we took on was to tell the stories of servicemembers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the past several months, as we gathered our staff and began to meet the men and women who have served, we knew that it would be a privilege to be able to share the stories of these servicemembers and their families so that the other 99% of the US population can better understand what is happening to our troops when they return from war.

We wanted to do something different than our usual short videos with this project, so we developed an idea for a LIVE internet-based show and decided to call it In Their Boots to let the audience know they would be hearing the information from the servicemembers' points of view.

The show premieres today, Wednesday July 2nd, at 4pm Pacific/5 Mountain/6 Central/7 Eastern at www.intheirboots.com. The stories are riveting and the show will be broadcast LIVE. You will have the opportunity to hear the stories from these servicemembers, learn about organizations that are helping, and find out how you can help as well.

The show will be broadcast from our brand new studio (it was a beauty parlor just 2 months ago), not quite finished since we are still doing some fundraising, but looking pretty good. Since it is LIVE, we invite you all to join the discussion and become part of webcast history by asking our interview guest a question, live, "on the air."

We are proud of what we have put together and we hope that you all tune in to see this. Please let us know what you think of it as well. And if you miss any part of the episode, be sure to check it out on our site: www.intheirboots.com. We plan on producing a new episode every Wednesday, live at 4pm Pacific.