Join Us.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen’s Association of New Zealand (SSAANZ) is a bridging platform that helps those who have served and those who are still currently serving to join a community that exercises both physically and mentally together outside of their careers.
Our charity is currently open to the three-armed military forces of New Zealand, which are the Army, Navy and Airforce. SSAANZ is a membership based, registered charitable trust. Membership is open to any person who has served in the NZDF regardless of deployment history or time served and there is a category for overseas/commonwealth service people. The organisation provides a platform to organise and subsidise outdoor and adventurous activities to its members but also offers programs whereby any service member who fits the criteria can receive support whether they are a member or not. We are proudly affiliated to the National RSA and this relationship has been key to getting maximum support for our community.
Our Members and Benefits.
As our charity is made up of veterans, we can see the benefits in creating this charity for not only ourselves but for all who want to partake in outdoor pursuits that have positive and proven benefits on the mind and the body. Each event we create follows three core criteria:
FOUNDATIONS
SKILLSET
COMMUNITY
By setting the criteria for each event we can measure and improve our events as we grow to give our members the maximum success in their own endeavours.
Main Events.
Our main events are held a minimum of once a month. Currently our main members are on the North Island so our events are 80% based on the North Island until we can gather more members in the South Island. Our events are either classified for Individual Members or Family Included events. We try to create a balance between the two so that all our members are catered for.
Each event created revolves around the three following areas: Foundations, Skillset, Community
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Are still serving?
If you are still serving within the defence force please click below to sign up with us.
Our Core.
Foundation.
Foundations is all about mental and physical awareness. The event needs to incorporate a level of physical exercise that pushes our members bodies in some way. This could be as simple as walking around lake edge and learning to fly fish which works on hand eye coordination and light physical exercise through to hiking over a Traverse on the South Island working a little harder on their physical strength hiking up and down steep mountains. An event also needs to incorporate mental strengthening. This may be achieved by the member by pushing through a difficult physical task through to developing discussions as a group about past mental issues they have been struggling through and learning how they can work through them.
Skillset.
On each of our events we endeavour to teach everyone either a new skillset that they have not learnt before or help them to improve on a skillset they already have. Our events not only aim to work on the Foundations of getting our members out and active, but for our members to also take away a skill in which they can go out and use for themselves in their own individual adventurous pursuits or to teach their own friends and family. Not only is this positive in learning a new skill to do but it also has mental positive stimulation by creating confidence and the sense of achievement of learning or developing a skill that can be used when they want head out on their next adventurous pursuit.
Community.
Our events a specifically group orientated. The specific reason being is we are creating a community of members that can get together, meet new people and open communication between them on and away from events. This is very important both on a social level as well as a mental health level. By creating a community, we can help to eliminate isolation of individuals. We hope by members attending our events that the individual will form new friendships and have the chance to open-up in a safe environment if they wish to do so. This has already been successful on many events. Our goal to make our members feel like they have a larger whanau surrounding them when they need to reach to someone.