Today we held the first Veterans And Friends Roundtable. The purpose of this meeting was to bring together groups who served our veterans community to talk over how we might work together. Present were representatives from the VA hospital, Washington DVA, American Legion, DAV, the office of Representative Jim McDermott, and of course VAF, whose idea this was. Diane Tice, a VAF co-founder, hosted at The Pacific Institute.
This was a very productive meeting. I have to put the minutes together tomorrow to circulate, and get started on some action items, but the simple fact of getting together and talking (and listening!) seemed to be productive in itself. I am puzzled that this may not have been tried before but we had waited for many months to get this put together through more official channels; finally about two weeks ago we decided just to go for it and invite people. So far, so good - and there's a lesson there, isn't there!