Community Spirit

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The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, had as one of the key points in her second inauguration speech that the cohesiveness of our communities and the shared responsibilities for our communities (in essence community spirit)would be her theme for the next seven years. She had over a dozen personal guests from the Community and voluntary sector at the ceremony to reinforce the point and bring them centre stage. The presidency can be a very good catalyst for achievement although the position itself doesn't carry a huge amount of direct power what she says and does can get a lot of attention. So hopefully volunteerism in Ireland will be getting a much needed shot in the arm to enhance its effectiveness and its position in peoples minds. That it is something all of us can get involved in and that it will be worth it in terms of what the community can give us back too.

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There's been quite a bit of discussion about volunteerism in the Ireland of today recently. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has talked about it a lot and one of the census question asks about whether people have volunteered in the past month and the general type of organisation they have volunteered for:
Social or charitable organisation
religious group or Church
Sporting organisation
Political or cultural org
Other.
In this day and age people have less time to give to traditional volunteerism but the various groupings above show how important to our society it is that we don't lose our Community Spirit. Sport for young people's development in particular, religion, politics and giving a hand up to people who need it as well as functions like search and rescue, paramedics and reserve defence forces.

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Prime Time had a good discussion on volunteerism in Ireland last night.