“Ann Shortt has been the driving force of the Drogheda Alzheimer's Organisation for 20+ years. It is fair to describe her as nothing less than a human dynamo.”, according to the person that nominated her for a Louth Volunteer Leader  Award.

Ann has been volunteering with the Drogheda Branch of the Alzheimer’s Society since her own dad had Alzheimer’s over 20 years ago and the service has gone from strength to strength in that time.

The big item on her agenda for several years has been the provision of a new, purpose-built Alzheimer’s day care centre to serve Drogheda and surrounding area. With a cost of 1 million euro, she has led the fundraising campaign which has involved hundreds of events and leading hundreds of volunteers at these events. That building got underway in 2020 and Ann couldn’t be happier.

On winning the award, Ann said “I have to say I was totally blown away that day, I was like a big kid. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was something I wasn’t expecting … It was just so nice and humbling to get an award like that”

“You don’t do these things for awards, but it is nice to be recognised I have to admit, and I was very humbled by the whole thing. I was going around grinning from ear to ear for a week.”

When asked what she would say to someone that is considering nominating a volunteer leader this year, Ann says “Go for it, nominate someone that you think deserves it!”

We will be sharing the full chat we had with Ann later this week.

Click here to nominate a volunteer leader!!

When friends, family or random strangers ask me what I do and I say ‘I manage Louth Volunteer Centre’ I am usually asked one of two questions – “What do you volunteer at?” or “What’s that then?” so I just thought I would write a bit of a blog of our activities in one week so people can get an insight into what we do!  

This is just a snippet of our week, much more happens every day such as calls to volunteers to check how things are going; calls to community organisations to make sure they have the supports they need to involve volunteers in their work; processing garda vetting forms and much more.

Monday:

Our monthly Exploring Volunteering zoom session took place on Saturday and our monthly Volunteering Matters email is going out today, so our Volunteer Engagement team in both Drogheda and Dundalk are particularly busy processing applications to volunteer from some of the over 5,000 Louth based volunteers registered on IVOL, the national volunteering database, and which we manage at local level.

Karen, our organisation support officer, is writing an email to go out to the over 750 community organisation contacts also listed on IVOL. We send a bimonthly email to contacts with information on training, events, and other supports.

Meanwhile Mairéad, our Projects Coordinator, is busy calling second level schools across Louth to confirm attendance at our Schools’ Youth Volunteering event being held online next week – over 300 students confirmed at this stage!

Tuesday:

Kayleigh, our Volunteer Liaison Officer and Garda Vetting Liaison Person, is out and about first in St. John of Gods service and then in St. Vincent’s Secondary School in Dundalk. Our vision is that Our community will be enriched by the benefits of volunteering, so we spend quite a bit of time out meeting groups young, old and everything in between – including people of all abilities – to showcase the benefits of and support them to get involved in volunteering. 

Although Louth Volunteer Centre is an independent charity, we are part of a national network of Volunteer Centres across Ireland and are affiliates of Volunteer Ireland. Today I will be attending the bimonthly Volunteer Centre Managers’ Network meeting – some really big items on the agenda, including the complete rebranding of all Volunteer Centres.

Tonight, I am meeting with the Drogheda Festivals Committee to do a site visit and assess volunteer requirements on a potential community event happening in Drogheda over Hallowe’en. We are exploring the possibility that this could be an event that is supported through our new Community Volunteers project.

Wednesday:

Another busy day, it’s Social Inclusion Week and as part of our activities for the week we are hosting an event in partnership with Connect Family Resource Centre promoting voluntary activity to a group of women from North Drogheda. The event is great fun and the vast majority of the attendees sign up to volunteer. Straight after the event myself and our Community Volunteers Officer, Tracy, have a zoom meeting with the Meath Volunteer Centre team to discuss possible partner events for the Community Volunteers project.

Karen is delivering an online work matters at the library presentation on behalf of Louth County Libraries. We regularly give talks, workshops and presentations to jobseekers and other groups on the benefits of volunteering and information on how to volunteer. Now that thinks are reopening we are looking forward to doing them in person again as we have been delivering them online since March 2020!

In the meantime, Kayleigh and Mairéad are in Dundalk IT speaking to students about volunteering and supporting the Volunteer Society for Sports and Societies Week. They will be back again tomorrow and are hoping for lots of registrations as it has been 18 months since we have been in the college. 

This evening we are delivering module three of our Empowering You Empowering Our Community programme, which is funded through PEACEIV and seeks to build capacity amongst individual volunteers in our community to step into the role of voluntary committee/board/trustee member – a crucially important role to our community and voluntary sector.

Thursday

Big day today, we launch our Louth Volunteer Leaders’ Awards! This is the second year of the awards recognising those who support volunteers in our community. We have two new categories this year, Leading Young Volunteers and COVID19. As part of the launch activity I have an interview on Dundalk FM and send out press releases to get some coverage of the awards. Our local radio stations, and indeed all our local media, are great supporters of community activity.

Tonight, we are partnering with Louth Public Participation Network and Louth County Council to host an event for community organisations called Breaking down barriers in your community. It is part of a calendar of events created by Louth Leader Partnership – we frequently work in partnership with these organisations to support and strengthen volunteering in County Louth. 

Friday

As well as being Social Inclusion Week it is also Positive Aging Week. Myself and Kayleigh are hosting our first hybrid online/in person event supported by Noirín from Louth Leader Partnership. We deliver a workshop on ‘Reframing Aging’ and showcase the benefits of volunteering to the older volunteer and our community. We had a group of men from Drogheda and District Men’s Shed on the in -person side and we also had people log in from zoom. It was really successful if a wee bit nerve wracking at first!

Did you know that the week of 27^th September to 1^st October is both Social Inclusion Week and Positive Aging week? We are partnering on a couple of events and would love if you could join us at them.

Our first event  ‘Breaking Down Barriers in Your Community’ features Bobby McCormack as guest speaker addressing the seen and unseen barriers to inclusion in our community for Social Inclusion Week. This event is in partnership with Louth PPN and Louth County Council, is designed to support community organisations to be more inclusive and will be held via zoom on Thursday 30^th September at 6.30pm. Access details below.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86077959403?pwd=ZERJaVNGVlp2dVBnY0dSVlF0QTBBdz09

Meeting ID: 860 7795 9403

Passcode: 383899

For our second event, to celebrate Positive Aging Week, we are partnering with Louth Leader Partnership and Drogheda Men’s Shed on Friday 1^st October at 10am  to deliver a hybrid workshop on Reframing Aging which will look at the value of volunteering to the older person and the value of the older person volunteering to the community.  Register in advance for this event at the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf-6rqD4jGNYwWUyDuJnVNA3p3crJOO9x

Louth Leader Partnership have also developed a calendar of events for Social Inclusion Week which is available to view here.