Royal British Legion Industries celebrates its 106th birthday

KentOnline / KMTV

The charity specialises in helping veterans adjusting to life after service, including employment, shelter and mental health.  Community Reporter Henry Luck reports.

Transcript

00:00Cake, music and plenty of laughter. That's what happened at the Royal British

00:13Legion Industries in Ellsworth as it celebrated its 106th birthday. I don't

00:21think many things can bring a community together quite like a birthday party

00:26especially one for the RBLI which has reached its astonishing 106th birthday

00:34party. So let's go inside and join the celebrations. It's a really good excuse to

00:42bring everybody together, the community of veterans that live on the village, our

00:46wider supporters, local corporates and you would have seen some very special guests

00:52some of the local mayors are here and they're all here to come together to

00:56celebrate 106 years of Royal British Legion Industries. But there's also another

01:01important part of the party and that getting the community together to break

01:08down social barriers. Also meeting the other mayors, meeting the veterans, meeting the

01:14Veterans Hub, meeting the RAF Association, they're all very good friends of mine as

01:18well, for which I will be laying a memorial only this Sunday. So I'm forever

01:24mixed up in the military, veterans, reserves and cadets activity as with the sea

01:29cadets last night. I love being with military people so that's just my

01:34passion but also I care about their mental health. I myself, I'm a civilian so

01:39learning different things about the military from military personnel

01:44themselves, it's really interesting and very factual to me. I think specifically for

01:48Twiggy and the other veterans it's mixing people who may not have met before and

01:53but have similar stories. Just a camaraderie that we've all missed so it's

01:57always good to get back with other fellow veterans and again hear everyone's stories

02:01and they might have gone through the same things and through one conversation

02:05someone may open up and potentially we could save someone's life because no one

02:09knows how deep their sadness goes at the end of the day. We know that isolation,

02:15mental health problems, PTSD are all issues that are endemic in our veteran

02:20population and anything like this where you welcome people in to a nice friendly

02:25warm environment and let's be honest feed them cake and give them drink it's

02:29always a good thing for them I think. The RBLI hopes veterans continue to thrive in

02:34Sibby Street letting them have their cake and eat it. Henry Luck for KMTV in Ellsford.

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