Photo: RNZ / Nathan McKinnon
The Returned Services Association (RSA) say they are modernising their approach to supporting younger millitary veterans.
Members of the RSA, Defence Force, members of Parliament and veterans from recent operational deployments attended an event at Parliament on Tuesday night unveiling new initiatives aimed at "relaunching" the organisation.
Speaking at the event, board chairperson Lieutenant General (retired) Rhys Jones said the RSA had been the backbone of support to veterans for 109 years, but "times do need to change".
"There is a new generation of veterans that are being produced every year that have different requirements to the World War I or World War II, or Korean veterans," he said
"They are an environment of social media. They are an environment of wanting to do things actively that are not necessarily about just coming together and talking, but actually actively doing things."
Jones announced four new initiatives; a renewed national support and advocacy network, improving the RSA's online capability, a new membership and communication system and a push to collect stories from contemporary veterans.
The national support and advocacy network, Jones said, would "focus more on central funding and management" for a more "standardised" approach to resources.
"That support still needs to be locally provided, but a far stronger emphasis on how do we support that nationally."
That would include help with career transitions out of the Defence Force and assistance getting in contact with Veterans Affairs, ACC and psychological or medical support, he said.
Today's world is a digital world, Jones said, and the RSA still had a "long way to go" to catch up on its online capability.
The initiative would include "more things that are on your phone" instead of the "clunky, mechanical, hand driven system" in use, Jones said.
"That will improve our reach and engagement with contemporary veterans [because] that's how they operate, that's how they interact, and that's what they expect an organisation to be able to provide." he said.
The collection of more contemporary veteran stories was something Jones admitted sometimes "drop through the gaps".
"There are lots of histories and official histories of World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and so on. But modern deployments, and there may be individuals going to UN missions or larger collective groups, East Timor or Afghanistan... those kind of things often come through the gaps."
"[There is] a dedicated need for us to capture those stories so the public can understand what the modern, contemporary veterans are about," Jones said.
