Bringing you closer to the real-life stories of people your donations help every day.
You change lives with kindness.
Shauna grew up with poverty, but your support helped fill her childhood with hope. Now she works with SVP helping other families through crisis.
“My first memory of SVP was the Christmas hampers. We’d get so excited. ‘The hamper’s here!’ We’d root through it and there’d be proper cereals like Coco Pops… we had COCO POPS!
And when SVP volunteers would visit, they’d give mam vouchers for school shoes, because we didn’t have any otherwise. We never had any money and Mam found it very hard. But that help from SVP was a massive weight off her shoulders.”
…continued overleaf
Inside this issue: Your support for vital Resource Centres. page 3 Making SVP the heart of your community. page 4
How you help put food on the table. page 6
Could you be a volunteer? page 6
Welcome to your Newsletter.
“Hi, I hope the wonderful stories you’re about to read give you some idea of the incredible difference your generosity makes in people’s lives. Because your support isn’t just for a day. You’re helping shape the lives of people like Shauna, and providing places that become vital social hubs for the people in our local communities. Your amazing support builds happy memories and bright futures. Thank you for caring!”
“What
counts in the end, plainly, is not only the quality of the service to the person in need, but the personal and selfgiving component of that service.”
– Frédérick Ozanam, founder of The Society of St. Vincent de Paul
Teresa Ryan, National President, The Society of St. Vincent de Paul
We’d love to have you on our team!
“Have you ever thought about joining our wonderful team of volunteers? SVP is looking for caring people like you to help bring friendly support and reassurance to those who need it most. Sometimes it’s giving someone a warm meal, and sometimes it’s just letting them know that you care.
Find out how you can get involved at svp.ie/volunteer or by dropping in to your local SVP office.”
“ Your donation doesn’t do one thing, it starts a chain reaction.”
- Shauna
The Community Kindness you inspire.
Geraldine is one of our amazing SVP Resource Centre managers and she sees your support in action every day.
“I’m from this area and my own kids came here for the summer camps. As a single parent it meant I could go to work and know they were somewhere safe. The centre even runs football teams for the kids with their own kit and club badge.
The centre gives older people a safe place where they’ll see a friendly face and enjoy a cup of tea, and it helps stop them getting isolated.
Growing up we knew the SVP centre was a place we could come for help.
“
The Resource Centre isn’t just a building. It’s a place where people know they’ll be welcome, where people feel they belong.”
Sharing food, stories and history
We have a community kitchen here too, where parents can batch cook for the week, or cook a family meal. One woman comes here from emergency accommodation and says, I just want my kids to know what my food tastes like.”
We have culture nights too and we had one family from eastern Europe who cooked a big meal for everybody. It was magic. Then one of the local men started talking about the famine and you could hear a pin drop.
The Centre has become such an important part of people’s lives, and I hope you can see how important your support really is.”
“It’s my community. It’s where I live. And working for SVP is very much about me giving back.
- Geraldine
One of the child therapy rooms you help support.
One of the resource centre kitchens.
Your gift of food and a future.
As one of SVP’s longest serving youth workers, Cassie knows that one vital way you support families, is making sure they and their children have enough to eat.
“Food hampers are one way to help put food on the dinner table, but different families have different needs, and that’s where the Social Supermarket comes into its own.
The hampers are pre-packed, but with the social supermarkets, people can come in to our Resource Centres and say, “Okay, we need two boxes of cereal, we need ham, and some X, Y, and Z.”
They get to pick the things they need and it means when the kids open the cupboard at home there’s something there. They’re not left with that lasting fear of whether there’ll be any food or not.
We keep an eye out in the summer camps and the children’s clubs as well. Has so-and-so got food with them? And if they don’t we make sure they have something.
“ These are families trying to make ends meet and they just need that extra bit of support.”
We even do cooking classes with groups of children. It teaches basic cooking, but budgeting too, and it can take a real weight off parents. Because maybe that’s a day when they don’t have money to buy food.
It helps make sure children don’t grow up hungry, helps give them life skills. That’s what our donors are giving people — skills for life.”
“It’s so important children don’t have that memory of having no food. If you grow up with that, it never leaves you.”
- Cassie
Your gift of childhood fun.
“We loved the Resource Centre. They couldn’t keep us out of it. I had so many great experiences there. I went horse-riding, did violin, guitar lessons, and singing.
SVP would take us to Balbriggan for a week in the summer, and we’d go crab hunting and building sandcastles. I went six years in a row. That was my holiday, and I loved every second of it.”
“We
never had money. When the milk was almost empty, we topped it up with water.”
“The volunteers became such a big part of our lives. They’d challenge us on things we said, our attitudes to things. They made us think about the world. Being around them changed me.”
A bright future shaped by you
“Now I work for SVP and I’m part of that world. I even sit opposite Cassie, who was one of my youth workers when I was a kid. Isn’t that amazing?
As a child, I remember SVP coming to our house, giving my parents money. Now I’m here, I can see the incredible effort and care that goes into it all – the members, the volunteers, the staff, and the donors.
I probably respect the donors more than anyone. People like you just wanting to make people’s lives better. It’s emotional for me, it really is. I hope you know you changed my life. Thank you.”
Shauna
Your kindness at work in your community.
Some of the ways your support is helping people through hardship across the island of Ireland.
“
I feel welcome at SVP. They’ll always do what they can. And they listen. They care.”
– Michael
Making your kindness monthly
If you are one of our amazing monthly donors, thank you so much for your loyal support.
Monthly Donors
OUR LOYAL REGULAR GIVERS changing lives today and everyday
If you haven’t yet, would you be interested in making an incredible regular gift to help more people get the ongoing support they need – and help create vital pathways out of poverty?
It’s so easy to do. Just fill in the reply form that came with this newsletter or go online to svp.ie. Thank you for helping to change people’s lives.