The ChangeX 100 social enterprise project wants Irish people to launch 100 new community projects in 100 days. Changex. org contains an online toolkit for setting up the local projects and groups: from GIY groups to Fáilte Isteach classes. Here, members of the Irish Community Rapid Response network share their experiences
Kate Crowley, from Ballinascarthy, and her five member committee didn’t have any experience in fundraising when, last August they started a local campaign to raise money. The goal: To pay for a new Jeep for their local volunteer doctor with the West Cork Rapid Response, Dr Jason van der Velde
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Only four months later they had close to ¤170,000 in the bank, waiting to be invested into a new Jeep and any vehicle equipment that Jason might need over the next number of years.
Dr van der Velde is volunteering with West Cork Rapid Response, the west Cork branch of Irish Community Rapid Response (ICRR), a non-profit organisation that complements the national ambulance service with a community dimension.
When someone dials 999 for an ambulance, a local network of medical carers – who in most cases will be closer to the place of the emergency – receives an alert at the same time and immediately gets to the patient.
“Where I come from in west Cork it can take more than an hour and a half to get to the nearest hospital,” John Kearney, the founder of ICRR, explains. He experienced this first-hand when his friend collapsed. “I was lucky that I could bring him to the hospital in time. But at the same time the daughter of another friend wasn’t as lucky.”
In many cases, receiving treatment in the first hour after a person collapses – for example after suffering cardiac arrest – is critical for a positive outcome.
Kearney started to build a network of local GPs, first in west Cork and then in other parts of the country, to ensure this service was available with the help of the community.
Right now, there are 56 doctors, or “responders”, a part of the ICRR system that was built with the help of partners with medical expertise at UCD in Cork and Dublin who provide regular training and some of the equipment needed.
“We want to get to 100 GPs by the end of the year to fully cover Ireland with our services,“ John says. But the responders are only one part of the story of what builds the ICRR service.
“The service is not cheap,” John says, as you also need reliable cars or equipment like defibrillators. “One saved life costs about €5,000. That doesn’t sound like a lot but if we don’t have the €5,000, we can’t provide the service.”
Kate Crowley had seen the work that Dr van der Velde did, getting up in the middle of the night to get to an emergency, all voluntarily. So she teamed up with four friends; three of them had suffered from cancer and survived. “We thought, We got a second chance in our lives; wouldn’t it be great if we can give more people in west Cork that second chance?”
So they set up a series of fundraising events with the goal to raise ¤35,000 for the “Jeep for Jason” campaign. It began with a five-kilometre walk, and within one day they already had collected €9,000. “We did it all with just buckets. People who took part in the walk but also people just passing on the road put in the money.”
After that, the community joined in and we organised 81 more events all over west Cork between September and December with more walks, coffee days, quizzes, concerts, threshings, fashion shows, and also a uniform-free day in all national and secondary schools in west Cork.
“In our team we have different skills: one of us is very well connected in the community, another one is good in communications and marketing, for instance,” explains Kate about how the campaign spread.
And that didn’t just help to raise the money; it also helped to raise awareness for the work of ICRR by telling the story in every corner of the county and by making the community a part of it.
“We would like to build this network of ambassadors for ICRR all over the country. We need more volunteers like Kate and her team in the country who support their local GPs in doing their work” says Kearney. “It’s important that the communities are included in ICRR, and that they stick together for this cause and understand the need of the service.”
Crowley and her team just started on their own, but ICRR will provide special training for everyone who wants to help save lives in their communities. In the training, people will learn how to build their team, how to generate awareness and also how to organise fundraising.
“We can’t have ambulances in every corner,” adds Kearney. “We couldn’t afford this. It’s up to the community to do their part too.”
See also:
[ changex.org/irish-community-rapid-respond Opens in new window ]
