Making
a Difference

Corporate social responsibility matters

Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme encourages our team to get involved in fundraising and volunteering with philanthropic organisations. We are proud to collaborate with charity partners, locally and internationally, to make a genuine difference for the communities we work in.

YMCA & Goshawk: Working in Partnership

Dublin YMCA has been helping young people in the inner city for over 160 years. It’s a very important cause to us, and we have been delighted to partner with them since summer 2017.

Since then, we have supported a number of projects within YMCA through funding and volunteering.

 

Goshawk funding has been used towards:

  • Refurbishing the YMCA youth space
  • Employing a staff member to run the Youth Café, and invaluable safe space for vulnerable young people under 25
  • Recruiting and training volunteer mentors for the Plus One Mentoring Programme, which mentorship to young people aged 11–15 years who may be at risk from moving into the youth justice system or facing expulsion from school
  • Giving a schoolbag full of stationary and goodies to all the young graduates of the YMCA’s daycare as they went on to primary school
  • Sending members of the Dublin YMCA management team to a global YMCA conference in Boston

Much of this funding was generated through sports events, such as the Staff Relay 2018, and through the CSR Matching Scheme.

The entire involvement of the Goshawk team will have a positive effect that will have reverberations throughout the future of these young people. They will remember Goshawk’s involvement with warmth and good humour as the whole team made them so validated.

Martha Young

STEP Programme Coordinator, Dublin YMCA

Volunteers from Goshawk have been delighted to get involved in:

  • Goshawk was well represented at the YMCA’s international “Celebrate the Y Day” on 7th June 2018. We were thrilled to volunteer on the day and to have a chance to get to know the Dublin YMCA community better.
  • At Christmas, volunteers from Goshawk helped out with their annual Christmas Tree sale.
  • The YMCA’s Support Training and Enterprise Programme (STEP) allows young adults to earn money while gaining training and work experience as the foundations to their future career. Goshawk volunteers worked with

STEP participants by mentoring and coaching them for interviews, in preparation for the next move into employment.

My experience to date of Goshawk has been approachable, engaging, and positive. A CSR relationship branches into many aspects of support, which I feel Goshawk express intimately with the YMCA.

Rachel Kinlan

Programme Development Manager, Dublin YMCA