The inaugural veterans festival buzzed with activity at Petersfield’s Festival Hall on Friday, January 24. With a focus on key issues affecting veterans, such as health, employment, and the complexities of armed forces pensions, the festival aimed to provide vital support and resources for the local military community.
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00:00I'm Megan Lloyd. I'm a veteran and current caseworker to Damon Hines, the MP for East Hampshire.
00:09I'm here today as one of the organisers of the East Hampshire Veterans Festival,
00:14along with my colleagues in the East Hampshire District Council, Petersville Town Council
00:18and the Petersville branch of the Royal British Legion.
00:22The inaugural East Hampshire Veterans Festival, there's a huge range of organisations here
00:28from small local charities to national support groups, the public sector, the private sector,
00:34all with one thing in common, which is they've got something important that can help or support veterans.
00:40We've also got lots of veterans here and in fact I've just been talking to a couple who've met up
00:44after having not seen each other for a couple of decades, so that's a nice aspect to this as well.
00:50We've got about 35 organisations, both local East Hampshire based organisations and national organisations
00:58who are showcasing themselves to show how they support the veteran community,
01:04mainly geared around East Hampshire, it's the East Hampshire Veterans Festival.
01:10We've had people come in already, people waiting at the door for us, when the door opened they were ready
01:17and waiting to see what was going on. We've had people come as far as South West London,
01:21so people are coming quite far to this festival and it's hoped this can be a framework for other festivals nationally,
01:29other local authorities, RBL branches, we've also got the office of Damien Hines, the local MP,
01:36assisted with the planning, so it's hoped that this can be a framework for other festivals around the country.
01:44We've been planning this for just under a year now, it was the brainchild of Megan Lloyd who's a veteran as well
01:53and it follows on from her experience when she left, much similar to mine when I left.
02:03As soon as we started talking, that's it, it all happened, this is what we want to do, planning, and then we're here.
02:11It's already a success and we're not even at 11am, so this is much bigger and better than I ever could have imagined.
02:22Part of being a district councillor, we did help by grant funding the cost of renting the room,
02:26so the district councillor were involved like that.
02:29We also initially got the idea through the district councillor's armed forces stakeholder group,
02:34where Megan Lloyd, one of the officers who works for Damien Hines, came up with the idea of having a festival
02:39and the idea went from there, so here we are today, thank you to her and thank you to everybody involved.
02:44The idea started mostly to cover off the big hitters as we would call them, so health, employment, Department of Work and Pensions
02:56and our very complicated armed forces pensions.
03:01A year ago, when we first started discussing the Veterans Festival and who would be here, they were a really important core,
03:10but it's grown so much beyond that and we have national and local veteran charities here.
03:17We also have some non-veteran specific charities, social prescribers, counselling services, we've got Hounds for Heroes,
03:25we've got a local military museum and it's just been fantastic to see veterans reigniting old friendships.
03:35We've had reunions and we've had some lovely conversations and it's just been lovely to see veterans of all ages
03:43picking up sort of artefacts from the times that they were serving, so it's just been such fun so far.
03:49Absolutely wonderful to see veterans who haven't seen each other for ages coming together, meeting each other
03:54and everyone knows that there's a real strong bond for those who've served in our armed forces,
04:01but there's that personal bond as well between people who haven't seen one another
04:05and events like this really matter to those veterans who can meet each other, discuss their lives and discuss their service history as well
04:13and I think it's fabulous to see, it's really heartwarming, it's wonderful.
04:16I think we were all up last night thinking, goodness me, what if nobody comes along, but that's absolutely not been the case
04:22and we all said to ourselves this morning, if one veteran comes through the door and gets some help then it's all been worth it,
04:29so I think we can safely say it's been worth it.