Olive wins National Volunteer Ireland Award!!

This International Volunteer Day we would like to say an enormous congratulations to Olive Murphy of Scaleforce who was recently surprised with a national Volunteer Ireland Award. Olive was one of the volunteers featured in our #LouthLandofLegends campaign earlier in 2020 and was nominated for the national Volunteer Ireland awards as a result.

Olive set up Scaleforce because she could see the need for adults to connect or reconnect to playing musical instruments but did not want finances to be a barrier. She also could see that connecting people through music could be a great social outlet for people and that formal music lessons or settings may take the joy out of the music for people so she has created a unique group encouraging adults to take up playing traditional music that is very inclusive with people of all ages and abilities participating. Olive gives her time to prepare all the music in advance, record the pieces for members to practice on and keeping connected with the group as a whole. 

They now have over 20 members who have become lifelong friends even though their paths may have never crossed in normal life. Since March 2020, she has been livestreaming sessions through their Facebook group which has been a lifeline for members throughout the pandemic.

Olive received her award, certificate and a hamper of goodies to celebrate in a surprise coordinated by Louth Volunteer Centre, Volunteer Ireland and her son Eoghan. Like other award winners across Ireland Olive had received a thank you card in the post, which she had been delighted with. Speaking of her award, Olive said; “It was such a lovely surprise and I was delighted to know (my son) Eoghan knew and helped Louth Volunteer Centre and Volunteer Ireland to organise the surprise. I loved the thank you card and I was going to get it framed.  Little did I know that I had actually won an award and what else I was going to get"

Congratulations Olive, well deserved!

Click here if you would like to let us know about the work of fabulous volunteers like Olive in our community.