Sergeant Clay Hunt killed himself on March 31, 2011. He was a 28-year old Marine Corps Purple Heart recipient with multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hunt also suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.
At his funeral, two close friends and fellow co-founders of Team Rubicon, Sgt. William McNulty and Sgt. Jacob Wood discovered that Hunt had additional Marine Corps friends that had actually resided within a 15-mile radius where Hunt had lived.
However, none of those nearby Marines knew Hunt was in need, let alone that he was just a few miles away.
POS REP, short for 'position report', was conceived by McNulty, Wood and Anthony Allman, another military veteran-turned entrepreneur, to prevent the next Clay Hunt tragedy.
This mobile application provides a location-enabled, social network exclusively for the military veteran community. While POS REP's main purpose is to reconnect veterans who served together, its underlying significance is to connect veterans to peers and resources within their communities.
They found that the current military program for preparing veterans for civilian life, the Transition Assistance Program (known as TAP among veterans), "lacks the ability to provide veterans ongoing support because it's not local. POS REP fills such need by connecting veterans to peers in their area while allowing them to crowd source through social media".
Weaving in their experiences with Team Rubicon, POS REP is also a universal mobile platform for non-profit, government and private sector organizations that support veteran reintegration.
Launching this past November for iOS devices (an Android compatible version is in the works), the POS REP team is adamant to bring the veteran community closer together to prevent tragedies, like Hunt's, from happening again.
It's not going to be easy, but with POS REP, veterans now have an important tool to reconnect with the people who understand them the best - other veterans.
Visit www.pos-rep.com for more information and download the iOS version here: POS REP.
Disclosure: the author is a proud member of Team Rubicon.
