Volunteer Celebration 2022

We were so delighted to be able to have an in person Volunteer Celebration this year for the first time since 2019.

A massive thank you to our local hotel in the Liberties the Hyatt Centric for generously providing the space for us. We were treated on the night to a talk from Liberties local, Anthony, of In Our Shoes Walking Tours who gave us a taste of the tour he takes around the Liberties area. We had Eric, a young person who has been up through Step Up, share about his experience of having a volunteer mentor over the years. Eric, along with another young person Evan, worked the room gathering material for Eric’s podcast called ‘Absolute Waffle’. We had another very talented young person Darragh there taking photographs. One of our European Solidarity Corps volunteers, Sarah from France shared about her year with Solas Project. There was laughter and tears!

Our volunteers who have worked alongside us through the pandemic received a small token of our appreciation, beautifully crafted by the young people in The Yard.

After 2 years of not being able to get together in this way, it was all the more inspiring to witness so many volunteers in one room, to feel the positive energy, to connect volunteers spread across our various programmes. Volunteers who may even volunteer in the same programme but on a different day got a chance to meet each other. It was also great to have this opportunity to acknowledge those volunteers who work primarily on their own speciality, behind the scenes or remotely (e.g. volunteers mentoring volunteers!).

Most of all we just loved having this opportunity to publicly thank each of our amazing dedicated volunteers and express again the foundational role volunteers play in enabling us to work towards our vision.