Battle Buddy Check- In

You Matter-Not Alone and Mystic Warrior Academy are joining forces to create a check-in app called Battle Buddies. The Battle Buddies app will allow any active service member or veteran who is in crisis to simply tap a button on the screen to alert our volunteers (a team of all-veteran men and women). Once the alert is sent out nationally, a volunteer Battle Buddy mentor who sees the alert will respond immediately to provide support.

Volunteers are trained to only provide momentary support and will immediately transition the distressed individual to the appropriate care. Battle Buddies will also provide updated referrals and resources for users with non-crisis mental health services in their community.

The primary goal of the Battle Buddies app is to substantially decrease suicide rates among active service members and veterans. The secondary goal is to encourage more victims of sexual assault to get their voices heard. Currently, there are no apps on the market to support military sexual assault victims.

Military armed forces are built around camaraderie, which is normally established by the brotherly and sisterly bond created by spending a tremendous amount of time together and the deep mutual trust gained both on and off the battlefield. For this reason, during a distress situation most soldiers and veterans are more likely to reach out to their own brothers and sisters in arms before reaching out to a professional for help.

Battle Buddies provides distress and life-saving crisis care for active service members and veterans to reach out to their sisters and brothers in arms for support. Your funding will go toward designing and building the Battle Buddies app as well as supplying ongoing funds to keep the app running. These ongoing costs include app store fees, cloud storage and hosting, and other technology costs as well as volunteer training.

The first phase, already in progress, is designing Battle Buddies by specifying included features. defining the overall look and feel of the app, and determining what each screen will look like, what notifications are needed, and what functions are available on each screen. This wireframe gives our developers a blueprint for building the app itself.

In phase 2, the developers will build the actual Battle Buddies app, coding each feature as defined in the wireframe. This is the most expensive and time-consuming part of the process.

Phase 3 is acceptance testing, which will include beta testing as well our own internal testing to ensure the Battle Buddies app functions as intended.

Throughout each phase, there are costs associated with the infrastructure related to Battle Buddies. We need email, hosting, cloud storage, and a notifications service. Your funding will help us cover these costs.

Phase 1, wireframe and branding: expected deadline Dec 15, 2020

Phase 2, app development: expected deadline Jan 12, 2021

Phase 3, beta testing/test flight: expected Jan 12 – 26, 2021

App release (app store review begins): expected Feb 1, 2021

An estimate of what each phase of Battle Buddies app development and implementation of a Volunteer Battle Buddy Mentor Program for the first year might cost follows:

Scoping, Branding, and Design: $6,000

App Development: $18,000

Testing and Publishing to App Stores: $2,500

Apple Developer Account (Annual): $99

Google Play Account (Annual): $25

Hosting/Support ($100/month x 12 months): $1,200

One Year of marketing, advertising, and publicity: $15,000

One year of training Battle Buddies mentors: $12,000

TOTAL ESTIMATED COST: $54,824

Any donation helps us toward our goal of saving lives for our active service members and veterans. Thank you in advance for your contribution!
Donna Quach, LMFT 
Army Medical Officer Veteran 
CEO/Founder:  You Matter-Not Alone Suicide Prevention Charity
www.youmatter-notalone.org


Natan Bradbury 
Army Veteran
CEO/Founder: Mystic Warrior Academy
www.mysticwarrioracademy.com