State of AMFAS: 2011 Review

I hope everyone had a safe and prosperous new year. Here at American Military Families Autism Support it’s time to reflect on where we’ve gone and where we plan to go in 2012.

Twenty-eleven was a a successful year for AMFAS families in bringing awareness, support and information to our community.

We expanded in a multitude of avenues that no other autism support organization anywhere did, simply because we are 100-percent focused on support of our military families. That’s it.

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AMFAS 2012: “Duty. Honor. Autism.”

Last year, we deemed 2011 “Year of the Autism Warrior” in appreciation of our military families fighting this War on Autism.

This year, we present the concept of “Duty. Honor. Autism.” to highlight three paramounts that define our military families dealing with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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What is your New Years resolution with Autism?

Now that 2011 is in the trash (we don’t want to recycle this), it’s time to move forward with our wishlist for the year.

Most everyone makes some sort of New Years resolution every year. Whether it’s losing a few pounds, working out, spending less or even changing the world, we’ve all been there.

As you contemplate your checklist, consider helping a team whose only mission is to support families.

There are two factors that apply to a very small demographic of American society. First: service in our nation’s Armed Forces, whether as the service member or the service family. Each sacrifice.

The other is that our families are dealing with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Of those, every child has different circumstances.

Our families are proud. Unfortunately, our families also have needs that people like to group together with larger populations. Unfortunately, our experiences aren’t always understood by these one-size-fits-all organizations.

When you think about what you want to do this year, changing you is important. However, working together to make change for all our families is both ground-breaking and lasting.

This year, be heard. Be an advocate. Facilitate change.

Help our military families dealing with autism not for yourself, for your own glory. Help them because they need it.

Blog, write, speak, communicate the needs of our children so others better understand.

American Military Families Autism Support is for military families, by military families providing support and information at the grassroots level. If your resolution involves helping our family, please consider partnering with us or joining our team. We need great people with a passion for helping our families.

If you already communicate for our children, let us help you broaden your reach. We only ask that you help us broaden ours as well through social sharing.

As our military, our team is an all-volunteer force. We’re also a bit unconventional since we don’t raise money like other nonprofits, we only raise support. Let’s make 2012 the year we really break-though in helping our kids.

Together we can make a difference!

Thanks as we conclude “Year of the Autism Warrior”

I thought I’d take the chance to closeout 2011 with a simple note of thanks to our families and friends who make American Military Families Autism Support what it is.

Last January we started 2011 by declaring the “Year of the Autism Warrior.” It was a simple way to re-enforce the work that our families do every day in supporting their family member with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Without our families, AMFAS doesn’t exist. It’s that simple. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. This isn’t about raising money, but raising the level of support in a way only military families know how.

Your feedback and support of this project is the reason it’s still growing and helping our children.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year and invite you to help make AMFAS a brighter year in 2012 for all our military families.

2011: Year of the Autism Warrior

I hope everyone had a safe and prosperous new year. Here at American Military Families Autism Support it’s time to reflect on where we’ve gone and where we plan to go in 2011.

First off, we are deeming 2011 Year of the Autism Warrior. Simply put, this is an important year for military families dealing with autism and together we are going to do something about this.

Twenty-ten was a difficult year for many of us. Whether deployed or fighting the battles on the homefront to recover our children from autism spectrum disorder, the challenges were there. These challenges taxed the ability to get done a lot of the things we wanted to achieve with the project. Despite that, we did make some headway thanks to the work of our community.

Last January, we were just passing 300 friends in our Facebook community. Soon we’ll be passing the impressive threshold of 1,000. As mentioned a year ago, if you know of other families who can benefit from this project, please invite them. Above all, please contribute to the conversation and comment.

Last year we launched a creative initiative of a Web 2.0 Base Resource Wiki site with 500 locations worldwide. The intent was there to try and provide all available data a military family needs to help support their ASD family in a new location. Unfortunately, the wiki proved a bit problematic for people to update and maneuver, affecting our ability to achieve this through a community effort. The wiki will now be integrated into the new website and a more straight-forward system for submitting updates will be used.

We launched a blog page for military families and simply called it AMFAS: The Blogs. Thirteen blogs are included on this page, aggregated from the original sites. This will be greatly improved with the new website. If you want a blog, amfas can host it and set it up for you. Simply send an e-mail to info@amfas.org.

For the beginning of the year we launched our new logo, designed to illustrate that hand-in-hand, our military families are walking the path with our children to recover them.

Next up is the long-awaited website. After two years of having the domain amfas.org, it’s been renewed for five more. It’s time to launch the site as soon as we work out the bugs.

Lastly, we are planning something special for April, highlighting representation of the military family within the autism community.

If you want to be a part of our project to better inform and support our military families and have motivation, skills, media (photos, articles, etc) you’d like to share please send and e-mail to info@amfas.org and volunteer.