Lachlan Woolford is back for another year of his Soldier On ‘Vested for a Cause’ challenge and in 2021 he has the full support of his hometown behind him.

Mr Woolford is currently a serving member in the RAAF Reserves and previously served 12 years in the RAAF as an avionics technician.

He was deployed on numerous exercises both within Australia and overseas, and he also completed a four-month deployment to UAE as part of Operation OKRA.

After being discharged, he relocated to Narrabri where he has since settled with his wife and daughter.

But it was hardly a smooth and simple transition.

Last year, Mr Woolford told The Courier that since being discharged he had noticed that there was little to no support for past serving members like himself outside of capital cities.

That inspired him to take action and the Vested for a Cause challenge was born.

Mr Woolford created the campaign through the Soldier On fundraising portal to raise both funds for and awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder for returning servicemen and women.

During the 31-day campaign, Mr Woolford wore a 10kg weight vest continuously, only removing it to sleep and shower.

The significance of the vest is that when you take it off the weight is removed, however, the weight of PTSD on returning servicemen and women is constantly carried around and cannot simply be taken off.

The vest became a part of Mr Woolford’s life for the month as he worked, trained at the gym and even played cricket with it on.

The Narrabri man will tackle the 30-day challenge again in September, but this year he has increased the weight of his vest to 16kg for an extra challenge.

He has also added a teams event to the challenge.

There are 10 teams of four which will take part and they are all sponsored by a Narrabri business.

Each team member will wear the 10kg vest for seven days each and like Mr Woolford, they will only remove it to shower and sleep.

Interest has been positive so far, with most team positions filled as well as several other participants signing up to take on the longer 30-day challenge.

Mr Woolford said that he was still searching for more people to join in and support the important cause.

“I’m putting out a call to arms,” he told The Courier.

“We’ve got the business sponsors we just need people to join the teams and wear the vests.

“At the moment there’s about eight spots we need to fill”.

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