REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SIMON COMMUNITY ‘WORLD OF VOLUNTEERS’ EVENT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SIMON COMMUNITY ‘WORLD OF VOLUNTEERS’ EVENT AS PART OF SIMON WEEK 2009
Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo i bhur measc inniu. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur bhfáilte chaoin agus cneasta. Last month, I joined with the Dublin Simon Community to mark its fortieth anniversary and today I am pleased to be here at the start of Simon Week 2009. I thank Patrick Burke, Chief Executive Officer of Simon Communities of Ireland for his kind invitation to be here with you to share the gratitude all of Ireland has in the work Simon does and the pride we take in the volunteers who make this work possible.
Simon is typical of many voluntary organisations in that it relies on the generosity of volunteers to shoulder responsibility for much of its work. It has of course a core professional staff but they work alongside a veritable army of volunteers, men and women who bring their experience and talents into the mix it takes to keep Simon going day in and day out. They get training and upskilling and support to help them take on this valuable work and all of them would say that the fulfilment they get back far, far outweighs the considerable amount that they put in. Their reward comes simply from doing something that brings comfort, friendship, a smile, a fresh hope into lives that have been almost shut down by adversity.
There is no law that compels a volunteer to get involved except the law of simple human decency. But in every corner of this country there are hundreds of thousands of such people involving themselves in the work of charity and care that keeps communities strong and resilient and creates opportunities and support networks for individuals who might otherwise disappear between the cracks. The hours that volunteers give are a phenomenal part of our civic strength and mutual support systems. Their fundraising often makes the impossible possible and allows so many people to enjoy rather than just endure life.
The Simon Communities of Ireland have a very special relationship with their international volunteers, who come from all parts of the world to spend a minimum of six months living and working in Simon Communities throughout Ireland. So far this year Simon has welcomed full time volunteers from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Columbia, France, Germany, South Korea, Sweden, and the USA. Each one of them has invested in our people and in our place and though they gain valuable experience, learn new languages, make new friends and get inside new cultures, in the end it is we who are in their debt for the gift of their work and for enriching us with their great diversity.
As the Irish saying goes, ‘ní neart go cur le chéile’, only through working together can we find our true strength. This remarkable combination of all the individual contributions of visitor and local volunteers and professional staff distils into a powerful force for the Simon Communities and for the homeless.
The complexity of the lives of the homeless, tough, difficult, chaotic lives, requires a very sophisticated range of services, from the simple food that keeps body and soul together to the support that is needed to help men and women move beyond homelessness and estrangement back into community again in ways that are sustainable. The 5000 families throughout Ireland who rely on Simon Communities for help could each tell a story of absorbing tragedy and wasted potential that has a seed of hope in it planted by Simon. Your practical daily presence – being community – to those who have fallen away from community or been pushed, is sorely needed and so too is your advocacy at local and national level, where you have helped all of us grow in understanding of the complexities of homelessness.
When we use that word – homeless - we so often think of an absence of bricks and mortar but you have educated us to see the poverty of that simplistic view. You open our eyes to the vulnerability of the homeless, the strong reality of being outsiders, the lack of privacy, the lack of safety, the real or perceived difficulties in accessing jobs, training, social services, health services, the obstacles to accessing everyday things that most people take for granted. Today even some of our new immigrants feature among the homeless and they so desperately need someone who cares. Today the work of the Simon Community is harnessed to highly successful, innovative partnerships between the statutory and voluntary agencies in the area of social services. The pressures are intense as the economic landscape creates a fallout that directly impacts adversely on so many lives and increases the risk of homelessness for some of our citizens.
There is any amount of angst, despair and even desperation but they achieve little by way of problem solving. Simon is driven by men and women who are problem solvers by people who know the truth of the saying "you'll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind". The volunteers that we are celebrating here today are the 'doers' rather than the well-intentioned dreamers or the draining cynics – these are the people who roll up their sleeves, get out and do the work that changes things for the better. Luckily, the Simon Communities can also give something back to their volunteers for the new skills and experience they acquire make them more attractive to future employers and thanks to a partnership with the Dublin Institute of Technology, all the fulltime volunteers with the Simon Communities engage in a Certificate in Volunteering giving them a recognised third level qualification.
Simon keeps working 52 weeks out of 52 but in this one special Simon Week of 2009 it asks all of us to join their relentless unselfish effort to bring a helping hand to the homeless and to work to bring the tragedy of homelessness to an end in our country. By the end of this week, I hope more and more volunteers will have come forward and that all over the country we will have grown wiser and more active in our efforts to deal with those of our brothers and sisters who this day have no community but the Simon Community. Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh maith agat.