FRG!!

[BAMF Army Wife]

So our unit is tryin to start a FRG. There is a total of 3 wives & a handful of soldiers.. We are tryin to get more people in, but they ingore the phone calls b/c its mostly cell phones and we are thinking its the Soldier's phones. So the SOs never know..

I have a few questions.. Anyone who is in a FRG, How did you get the news out to people? What kind of activties did you do throughtout the year? We have a few ideas, but like i said, we are just starting out..

I offered to do anything computer wise (go figure) But if anyone has some advice i can pass on to everyone else that would be wonderful.

Our next meeting is this wednesday..
we are making baskets for deployed soldiers & then going to the soup kitchen (giving food to homeless/everyone) afterwards. Im really excited about that.

Thanks!

[Jessybean]

It's hard to start up an FRG, especially if the soldiers aren't sharing information with their wives for whatever reason. The command should get involved and give incentives to the soldiers for their spouses showing up at a meeting. In past units i've been FRG leader in, the command would have a mandatory meeting for all the soldiers and encourage them to bring their wives. After that first initial meeting, the soldiers might get PT off or something of that nature if their wife showed up to the monthly FRG meeting. It really helped to get people there.

Also the command should be getting home phone numbers, if they have one, from the soldiers so their spouse can be contacted. Getting emails is also very beneficial. We had a data sheet that each soldier was required to fill out if they were married with basic information and ways to contact the spouse. The command enforced that these were filled out and returned and that was how we got most of our information to start the long process of contacting everyone.