Lend A Hand – Five Great Irish Causes To Get Behind This Week

Every week in the Her.ie offices we are inundated with requests from people asking us to help them promote their charity events. While every cause is worthwhile, unfortunately we can’t get around to all of them and so for that reason, we have decided to put together some of these events from around the country. Every week, we will feature five events you should get behind or get involved with over the next few months. There are tonnes of amazing organisations in this country, let’s help them out. 1. DAVIN for World Suicide Prevention Day. The fifth feature from award-winning Irish film director Graham Jones entitled DAVIN examines the reaction of an Irishman’s friends and family to the news of his suicide and is being made freely available online in 136 countries in advance of World Suicide Prevention Day 2014. The movie features a large ensemble cast of Irish actors who themselves feel it’s deeply important to draw attention to this issue - all playing mourners driving their various cars to the funeral of a person who actually took his life in a car. World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) is an awareness day observed on September 10th every year, in order to provide international commitment and action to prevent suicides, with various activities around the globe. This year's theme is 'Suicide Prevention: One World Connected’. The suggestion is that combating suicide requires connections on many levels: social, clinical and cultural. You can watch the full film here. 2. Gala Up the Hill for Jack & Jill The Jack & Jill Foundation’s ambassador Miriam O’Callaghan today (Monday 18th August) launched the inaugural ‘Gala Up the Hill for Jack & Jill’ campaign which takes place in September nationwide to help fill the €200,000 funding shortfall facing the children’s charity in 2014. Joining Miriam, to give the campaign a big push by climbing their first mini hill in Merrion Square, were junior ambassadors ‘Jack’ Marek Doyle age 7 and his sister ‘Jill’ Alicja Doyle age 5. For each registration fee of €16 for this fundraiser, one hour of Jack & Jill home nursing care will be funded. The charity is urging the public to get their walking shoes on and climb a hill, big or small, in order to raise the much needed funds for Jack & Jill. If a physical hill is too much to tackle, the ambassadors are calling on people to take on a ‘hill of’ washing up or ironing or even overcome an emotional hill – the choice is yours! Registration for the event, which runs throughout the month of September, is now open and it is easy to get involved by registering online atwww.jackandjill.ie and then dropping into one of the 200 Gala stores nationwide to pick up the registration pack. Signing up costs €16, an all-important fee that will go towards funding one whole hour of nursing care for one of the 300 Jack & Jill children with life limiting or life threatening conditions based across every community in Ireland today. You can find out more info here. 3. Kilbarrack v The Irish Legends for Irish Autism Ireland. Tickets are also available to purchase through the website www.kilbarrackunitedfc.com. 4. Musgrave Triathlon raising €250k for charity. Musgrave Retail Partners have again set an incredible fundraising target of €250,000 for their annual Musgrave Triathlon, which takes place in Farran Woods on August 30 2014, in aid of Breakthrough Cancer Research and Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin. The public can also donate funds to the cause by purchasing travel mugs which will be available at the end of August in SuperValu and Centra stores. There are three difference colour mugs, green, blue and red with both of the charities logos on them and will retail at €3 each. Over the year’s Musgrave together with their retail partners, SuperValu and Centra have raised more than €3.5m for charities through the Musgrave Triathlon. More information can be found on musgrave-triathlon.com, the Musgrave Triathlon Facebook page, or by contacting Musgrave Retail Partners Ireland on 021-4803000. 5. Great Pink Run for Irish Breast Cancer. Monies raised from this event and others help enormously in research efforts, not least by supporting our specialist nurses in each of the eight designated cancer centres where they are building the countrys first National Breast Cancer Bio & Patient Profiling Resource.  This facility enables clinicians and scientists to avail of much larger volumes of samples from which to conduct their research thereby speeding up discovery and ultimately affecting more positive treatment outcomes for patients In addition the charity have been able to purchase state of the art equipment to enable each patient diagnosed, to be given their own personalised treatment plan.  This new innovative genetic analysis determines each patients personal situation and then provides valuable information as to their most appropriate course of treatment.  Every person’s cancer is different and hence tailoring treatment is vital in ensuring positive outcome. To register for the run, please log on to the Great Pink Run website. If you have a charity event you would like us to help with, please send us an email to Hello@Her.ie or to Sue.Murphy@Her.ie.