We're happy to report that we managed to we had a really ambitious and successful month with PsyCare Ireland in August.
The nature of the festival scene in Ireland means that a lot of events are condensed together in a short period of time, trying to take advantage of the window of good weather, public holidays, and touring schedules. For organisations like PsyCare Ireland, this poses a unique challenge - we want our service to be on hand at events to help, but as a volunteer-led organisation that values the hard graft all of our volunteers put in, we also want to spend resources wisely.
Part of the rationale of expanding our volunteer training through 2023 and 2024 was to allow us to manage these kind of situations, and last month we were able to effectively draw on our incredible team of volunteers and team leaders to be on hand at three different events across one weekend.
Our first group was on hand for the whole weekend at Another Love Story in Killyon Manor in Meath, and our second group was up in Bellurgan Park in Co. Louth providing welfare and harm reduction at the intimate If You Know You Know festival. Between the two events 22 people presented for psychological support and many more engaged with throughout the course of the weekend - as we noted before, this on-site engagement presenting harm reduction information and reminding people that there is a supportive space available should they need it is a factor that often prevents potential crises from arising. Our third group was on site in Inchicore in Dublin for The Works, where for the second year we provided outreach and harm-reduction information for attendees.
Covering this weekend involved 30 trained volunteers, several van loads of equipment, and a lot of love - overall we are delighted with the fact that we have grown to a point where we can confidently cover multiple events in different parts of the country!
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