Virtual War Memorial Australia secures education funding from South Australia

Funding from the South Australian Government will allow high school students to continue publishing their findings in Australia’s Virtual War Memorial.

Launched in 2014 to commemorate the start of WWI, Virtual War Memorial Australia logs the histories of servicemen and women with details including their units, specific conflicts, places visited, memorials and final resting places.

The database has been expanded over time to include all conflicts that Australia has been involved in, from the Boer War to Afghanistan.

A total of 656,000 person entries exist on the site with 180,000 of them fleshed out with contributions from students and volunteer contributors.

With the previous fund set to run out in August of this year, the grant of $400,000 over three years will allow the educational component to continue until June 2022.

Chief Executive Officer of the Virtual War Memorial Australia Sharyn Roberts said the project is invaluable for its educational benefit.

“We have a strong view that education and commemoration goes hand in hand,” Roberts said.

“It helps students understand how to contribute to our understanding of history — it’s history in action.

“Over 2000 students will make 2000 contributions by the end of the year.”

She said the project gives history teachers the confidence they need to inspire their students by way of one-on-one consultations with historians and ready access to resource sheets.

“The stronger the passion and commitment is, the more likely that’s passed on to the students,” said Roberts.

Roberts said they plan to grow the Virtual Memorial by the end of the year by uploading 800,000 records from the Australian War Memorial to bring the site to to a total of 1.45 million entries.

There are 21,000 registered contributors, a third from South Australia, who document and update the profiles of all the servicemen and women.