M&S Dublin Grafton St

Lamh Failte helping the homeless, is a non-profit organisation founded and set up in Dublin in 2020. We help homeless people by providing a food and clothing stall on North Earl Street, here in Dublin City. We hand out hot homemade tasty dishes, cold dishes, hot fluids, clothing items, sleeping bags, toiletries, snacks, portions of fruit, and we also give out takeaway dishes, every Saturday evening. Our group is ran by volunteers and there are about 20 to 25 of us at any given time. All of our volunteers source and cook the donations in their own homes, then we meet up on North Earl Street every Saturday from 7.15 pm to around 9:30 pm. We rely heavily on donations from the public and local business. We are not a registered charity and cannot accept cash donations.

Jobcare is a for-purpose organisation whose mission is to help jobseekers find and keep satisfying employment. At Jobcare we believe that working matters. Working brings income, brings structure to the day, brings physical, mental, emotional, and indeed for some, spiritual satisfaction. Working positively impacts family life, friends, neighbours and community acquaintances. Working contributes financially to the overall economy. Working matters. Jobcare has for the past 30 years been serving the needs of unemployed people in Dublin’s City Centre, and now across all the island as well. From a starting point in 1994 of 1 full-time and 6 staff on work programmes, the charity has grown to 12 full-time staff and 55 staff on work programmes – (a work programme is a combination of work experience and training for long-term unemployed people). Currently, Jobcare provides 20 courses in job-seeking skills per year to over 1000 people. Our resource and advice centre caters for over 9,000 visits per year. We also provide wrap-around supports such as computer courses for jobseekers needing to upskill in this area. Major accomplishments of Jobcare include: 1. Development and establishment of the ‘Trasna’ Programme for ex-offenders in 2008. Since then 108 ex-offenders have participated in the programme. Of these 56% have progressed to employment or further education. The reoffending rate for Trasna is 9% compared with the National average of 45%. Paul Mooney, Jobcare’s Chief Executive and Co-founder was twice an awardee of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland in recognition of his pioneering work to address this pressing societal issue. 2. In late 2010, recognising the unprecedented increase in unemployment among professionals and graduates due to the economic crisis, Jobcare developed a new programme of support targeted at this new group of unemployed who were being left behind. In its first twenty programmes "Jobnet" provided support for over 900 professionals and graduates with 65% retraining or regaining employment (62% in employment). Peter Johnson, Director of the Jobnet Programme, received an award from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland in 2013 for the transformative impact of this initiative for jobseeking professionals. We are very grateful to the many companies, large and small, that support Jobcare in a practical or financial way. If you believe that ‘working matters’, we invite you to partner with us in helping unemployed people, either directly by hiring them, or indirectly by sharing talent, technology and resources with Jobcare. For example, we benefit from surplus food donations from Marks and Spencer. These enable us to provide snacks and lunch for our unemployed transitional work programme participants and snacks for our unemployed clients. Whether having lunch around a table or enjoying a coffee break together, providing food and building community are both really valuable for our unemployed people.

Focus Ireland works with people who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes across Ireland. We are driven by the fundamental belief that homelessness is wrong. Wrong because it is a failure of society that creates victims out of ordinary people and robs them of their potential. Wrong because it can be prevented and solved but is allowed to continue, thereby undermining our society. Since 1985, Focus Ireland has been the leaders in tackling the root causes of homelessness and we have a history of delivering innovative, long-term solutions. Ireland has been experiencing a housing crisis for the last decade. Due to the severity of the crisis, the Irish State has been forced to provide emergency responses and accommodation rather than delivering long-term solutions. While this is understandable, it is not a permanent or sustainable solution. At Focus Ireland, we do not just seek to manage the crisis, we seek to solve it.