Building Strong and Ready Teams

Building Strong and Ready Teams (BSRT) – formerly Strong Bonds – is a command directed, chaplain led, community partnered approach that strengthens spiritual readiness for soldiers of all ranks and their families. We work to increase the holistic health of soldiers and families by providing evidence-based relationship training and life skills necessary to endure adversity. Our programs build spiritual readiness and moral strength that lead to better decision making and healthier behavioral outcomes. We teach people to value themselves and others, and we ensure the free exercise of religion for all denominations.

Events

Married Couple and Family Weekends

Married Couple: August 25-27, Falls of the Rough, KY
Married Couple: September 22-24, Santa Claus, IN (priority given to soldiers returning from deployment).

More events may be added -- stay tuned!

Soldier Leadership Training

Where: Columbus, Indiana

Dates:

July 25

Stay tuned for another training date in August

Curriculum Overview

7 Habits of Highly Effective People for Soldiers

This material puts forward a principle-centered approach to both personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Rather than focusing on altering the outward manifestations of your behavior and attitudes, it aims to adapt your inner core, character, and motives. The seven habits will help you move from a state of dependence to independence, and finally to interdependence.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People for Marriage

The 7 Habits framework represents a new mind-set and new skill-set to help couples create a strong marriage. Many couples are using the principles taught in the 7 Habits framework to grow stronger and stay on track.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People for Families

The 7 Habits framework represents a new mind-set and new skill set to help families create a strong family environment and structure. Many families are using the principles taught in the 7 Habits framework to grow stronger and stay on track.
Speed of Trust

Speed of Trust is about the importance of trust and how it can improve all aspects of our lives, from personal relationships to productivity in the military and in our civilian lives. Trust improves communication, and in doing so, speeds up efficiency and helps a team become more productive at the same time. Throughout this workshop, participants learn tips on exactly what to do to increase trust in our lives.
PICK (Premarital, Interpersonal, Choices and Knowledge)

The program teaches two main points. First, how to pace the development of a relationship in a healthy way so that the love is blind syndrome is avoided. Second, the program teaches five areas to get to know about a partner that accurately predicts what they will be like in a long-term relationship.
Marriage LINKS (Lasting Intimacy through Nurturing Knowledge and Skills)

Falling in love is easy.... staying in love requires recalibration. The key is that couples need to regularly balance their imbalances by strengthening and setting goals with each of the five dynamics of the RAM in weekly “huddles.”
Our Home Runs

The Our Home Runs program focuses on family bonding and is built around a baseball theme in which parents are compared with coaches and the kids are compared to players. The Home Runs program applies the RAM to family relationships to strengthen the ways that families communicate, respect, work and play together, support and build family resilience, and express affection and affirmation.
Family Wellness

A quickly learned and easily adapted program, which has proven effective in a variety of communities, cultures, and languages. It is currently used for prevention and intervention in the areas of domestic violence, drug, alcohol, and child abuse. Some additional applications are for relative caregiver families, stepfamilies, in chaplaincy/military programs, families in gang-impacted neighborhoods, for teaching conflict resolution skills to youth and families, for teen parents, for family preservation programs, as well as for parents who want to get back in charge of their children and their lives.
Prep 8.0

PREP 8.0 is highly interactive containing videos, activities, discussion questions, and more. Based on over 30 years of research, this program will help married couples strengthen their relationships and give them skills and insights that they can use every day.
Got Your Back

This workshop helps participants improve decision-making skills, increase resiliency, and achieve goals for a variety of relationships, including friends, workmates, family members, dating/partners and those who parent and co-parent their children.
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

Through exploring a variety of subjects including the myth of a "soul mate," the different ways men and women think, the conflicting levels of libido, and the necessity to forgive, we find the key to marital bliss is not romance or destiny -- it is work and skill. Couples need to work hard at maintaining their relationship and to have the skills to pull it off. This video based workshop will include lots of laughs as well as plenty of discussion and learning about yourself.

Types of Programs
Program Highlights and Benefits
Program Components
Eligibility

The ABC's of Relationship Training

Alpha – 4 hour events. These events, primarily geared for the single soldier and for couples, focus on a specific theme and include a great meal. We like to choose a venue where you can continue to enjoy time together with friends or your spouse. The focus is on empowering the individual soldier to balance the stresses of military life while finding and building a healthy relationship that can last a lifetime. For couples, the half day focuses on one segment of our weekend training. Couples work on a specific area of their relationship to strengthen it and prepare the relationship to endure the many challenges of military life.
Bravo – 8 hour events. These events, geared for single soldiers, couples and families, allow soldiers and their families to learn together and take home ideas to incorporate into their daily lives. The venues selected help promote couple and family fun time during and after the event, and the ideas they take home can enrich and strengthen them as individuals and as a family unit.
Charlie – 12 hour events. These events, geared for couples and families, provide training to strengthen relationships, inspire hope and rekindle marriages. Whether you’re celebrating one year of marriage or 20, this training will have something for you. You’ll get quality time with your family through fun events and evening activities located at retreat centers and hotels.

Free lodging for Charlie events
Optional childcare with a certified childcare agency
Up to five meals paid
Take-home materials
Meeting other military individuals and families
Event locations throughout the state of Indiana

Singles. With three different curricula, we offer events that focus on resilience and becoming a more effective leader to healthy relationships and learning how others can shape our lives.
Married Couples. We have six different sets of materials to help couples strengthen the marital bond and to give couples the tools and information they need for better communication and relationship building.
Families. Using three curricula, our facilitators help teach effective communication and listening skills to parents and children and build parental skills to help care for and manage children. Note: Children are active participants in all Strong Bonds for Families Retreats.
Families of Deployed. Provides tools to enable families not just to survive, but to thrive in the midst of their soldier’s deployment. Note: Children are active participants in all Strong Bonds for Families of Deployed training events.
Pre-Deployment. Provides modules identifying unique challenges that single soldiers, married couples and Army families will face, and planning how they will manage their relationships through the stress of pre-deployment.
Reintegration. Provides tools to assist soldiers and their families with issues pertaining to the transition from the battlefield to the home front, as family members adjust to disrupted routines and challenges of reconnection.

Title 10, Chapter 88, Section 1789 and paragraph 16-6e AR 165-1 (Annex F) states the authority for participation in chaplain-led events:

Active Duty Soldiers, Reserve Component (ARNG and USAR) Soldiers in an active status, and their immediate family members are eligible to participate in Building Strong and Ready Teams training events.

“Immediate family members” means: 1) The member’s spouse or 2) Any child of the member as described in 10 USC 1072, subparagraph (2)(D) and subparagraph (6).

No authority exists for Department of the Army (DA) civilians to participate in the Building Strong and Ready Teams program.

Building Strong and Ready Teams is a U.S. Army program authorized and funded to provide support to soldiers and their families; attendance at Building Strong and Ready Teams events is restricted to soldiers and Army families.