Samaritans volunteers on the street in Cork city centre to provide unique emotional support

Samaritans, the emotional support charity, announces that volunteers from the organisation’s Irish Festival Group will be attending the Cork Midsummer Festival over the weekend of 17th to 19th June 2011 to provide their own unique brand of face-to-face emotional support to anyone in need.

This will be the fifth time that Samaritans volunteers will be providing a presence at the Festival. They will be based at the top of Patrick’s Street near the Grand Parade side in the Dawn Square area in the city centre.

Festival volunteers are drawn from Samaritan branches all over Ireland. The volunteers carry out their Festival duties over and above their commitments in their branches.

Festival Group Co-ordinator, Anne Corcoran says, “We are delighted to be able to provide our own unique face-to-face emotional support to anyone who feels they need it over the weekend. We know that this is a particularly difficult time for many people in the Cork area who suffer from loneliness and depression. I want to assure those people, and anyone else who is feeling vulnerable, that Samaritans are here for you now, 24 hours a day all year round.”

“We know that there will be many young people arriving in the city centre to celebrate following the completion of their Leaving Certificates. For many it will be a happy event but for some it may not be. They may feel vulnerable. Our trained volunteers are manning our phones right now if anyone needs us and that is the uniqueness of the Samaritan service – 24:7 emotional help, fully confidential and non-judgmental. I cannot emphasise the last part enough because that is a key element of our service. We don’t give out unwanted advice because we don’t advise. We listen and we give the space for the person contacting us to talk.”

“Festival branch Samaritan volunteers will replicate the non-stop Samaritan telephone service but do so by providing face-to-face emotional support by our constant availability from 9pm on Friday night right through to 2am on Sunday morning.”

The volunteers will be easily identified – they will have their traditional white van, which will have Samaritans national telephone helpline banners attached to it in their eye-catching green colouring.