History
The first official meeting of North East Scotland Disabled Veterans Association was on the 23rd of March 2007, chaired by the founder, Mr. Jack Dunlop ex-RAF (Air Movements).
Jack had the idea to form an association dedicated to the veterans of all services, who were missing the comradeship and brotherhood that was available in the services.
This was by no means an overnight decision as Jack had been thinking about this for a number of years.
At the inaugural meeting the association had fifteen members from all walks of life and with different disabilities. The Association welcomes people with disabilities of any kind.
The disabilities do not have to be accountable to service, as most of our members have disabilities which are through life in general such as stroke / heart attack / cancer.
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NESDVA is a self-help group set up nearly four years ago by a number of individual veterans of the armed forces in the North-east who were experiencing disability either through their service or otherwise.There are now 40+ members who have served in every conflict around the world from Korea to the Falklands, including three who served in World War 2. Financed completely by their own fundraising efforts they meet in the Phoenix Centre in Torry and provide social activities, comradeship and friendship, chaplaincy, counselling, alternative therapies, computer studies, the opportunity to take part in memorials locally and nationally as well as providing honour guards at funerals of their members. They have taken members who were prisoners of war in WW 2 back for the first time to their place of battle and capture, enabling the veterans to seek for the first time some form of closure after all these years. Day to day they are an understanding support mechanism drawing disabled veterans out from years of exclusion and loneliness to the support of those who share their experiences. |