Charity status was granted to VIA in January 2009 and on receiving this it was down to Billy MacLeod to move things forward on his own as the other two guys had decided not to be involved.

During 2009, still mainly on his own, Billy MacLeod attended events spreading the word about the charity’s aims and he also attended some courses and trained as a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Time Line Therapy (TLT) and Hypnotherapy which helped with his own personal development and communication skills.

Billy MacLeod had begun to work with another charity that helped veterans with therapy using NLP, TLT* and Hypnotherapy and there was no doubt that some veterans changed.
His concern at this time was though that once a veteran left the safety net of therapy and returned home to the environment that they lived in which in many cases could well be part of the problem that they could revert back to how they were before therapy.

This was a period of study for Billy MacLeod and research into the merits of working in the outdoors and Wilderness Therapy and the studies of Doctor Simon Crisp who developed a programme called Wilderness and Adventure Therapy in Australia which worked with juveniles using the outdoors as a way of how they felt about themselves.

These studies continued with Paul Boag from MyXcellence Training and Communications, a Trainer of NLP with 30 years of outdoor experience as a soldier and civilian and who Billy MacLeod had worked with in therapy with veterans suffering from PTSD.

It was through this period of study that we began to develop the ALIVE Program based on our training in NLP and our studies into Wilderness Therapy and with the University Veterans Institute at Cardiff University.

It became clear to illy MacLeod at this time that the therapy that veterans went through was extremely important and that there was always an end point where veterans had to then use what they had learned and returned home.

This was easier said than done as it meant making decisions and taking ownership on what they did within their own environment when in fact the easiest thing to do was to do nothing and continue life as it had previously been before receiving any therapy.