Source: Radio New Zealand
A volunteer cleans the gravestones of people who served New Zealand. Supplied / NZ Remembrance Army
A group that restores the headstones of servicemen and women is seeking more volunteers.
The New Zealand Remembrance Army was set up nine years ago in Porirua and now has volunteers all over the country who restore the gravestones of people who have served New Zealand and tell their stories.
The group had restored about 350,000 headstones so far, as well as putting up about 140 new headstones on unmarked graves.
Managing director Simon Strombom said the group was seeking more volunteers in places such as Northland, Auckland, Wairarapa and Christchurch.
“This time of year we are kind of at the end of the summer, we don’t do a lot of restoration. We tend to go into a research phase, so it’s a good time to build the teams, build the experience and get our national training standards and all those types of things ready for when we start again in August,” he said.
“We do have quite strict standards and work with stone masons a lot around our techniques and what we use.
“We would rather a quality volunteer who knows what they are doing than a big mass team. We favour quality over quantity, that is a key thing for us.”
New Zealand Remembrance Army volunteers have restored about 350,000 headstones so far. Supplied / NZ Remembrance Army
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
