Samaritans, the emotional support charity will have volunteers from it’s Irish Festival group at the Cork Midsummer Festival. They will be providing unique, confidential, non-judgmental, face-to-face emotional support in a discreet way to all those in need.

The volunteers will be available around the Daunt square area from 9pm Friday evening all the way right through to 3am Sunday. Festival volunteers come from Samaritan branches all across Ireland and receive additional training to provide emotional support in the open.

Irish Festival Samaritans attend various festivals across Ireland during the summer months. These include the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival, the North West 200 in Portrush, the Fleadh in Cavan, Riverfest in Limerick and Oxygen. In 2011 the number of people accessing emotional support at all festivals was nearly 1,500.

Festival Samaritans Group Co-ordinator Catherine Slater says

“We as Samaritans are delighted to be at the Cork Midsummer Festival to provide discreet face-to-face emotional support to anyone who needs it over the weekend. People attend festivals including the Midsummer Festival to meet up with old friends, make some new ones and generally to have a good time. For some people though, crowded places can sometimes be very lonely when they are in distress or despair.

Making the Samaritan service available in the open allows us to reach people who may not have yet made contact with us by phone or by email. By our presence on the streets of Cork during Midsummer Festival we can provide that valuable emotional space to allow a person to talk to our volunteers about their feelings, most particularly if they are in distress. If they need to talk about their problems next week or next month we have excellent volunteers in our Cork branch and throughout Ireland who provide emotional support over the phone 24/7. Our email address is jo@samaritans.org”