Age Action
Ireland
For All Older people
CARE & REPAIR
Free Odd-Job/DIY Service for Older People
Are you 65 + years? Do you have a small repair job that you would like to have done? Age Action Ireland’s leading charity for older people. Our Care & Repair service uses a pool of trustworthy handypersons to carry out minor repairs and odd jobs for older people who find it difficult to do these jobs themselves.
Some of the jobs that our volunteers can do include changing light bulbs, tacking down carpets, minor painting and decorating, hanging curtains, minor gardening, minor carpentry, and installing smoke alarms. The service is free ; you only pay for the materials used. For bigger jobs that are beyond the scope of our volunteers, we maintain a register of reliable and honest tradespersons whose contact details we can provide. We also arrange regular visits to older people.
All volunteers are Garda vetted and carry official Age Action identification cards. To arrange to have a job done for you, simply call John O’Donnell 021-2067399 and we will arrange to have local volunteers contact you.
Phone 021 2067399 Also contact —– http://www.ageaction.ie/
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BISHOPSTOWN MENS SHEDS
Expect to be up and running in the very near future
We would to hear from trades people
Retired or not retired
Who may like to help others to reach
fulfillment in their daily lives
Please ring
Organisers
Barry Griffin
086 6050279
Or
Roger Coughlan
086 3866975
ANN MARIE HOURIHANE Irish times March 3rd 2012
THE MOTTO OF the Irish Men’s Sheds Association is: “Men don’t talk face to face; they talk shoulder to shoulder.” The idea is that men are task-oriented and that they enjoy “doing stuff together”, as menssheds.ieputs it. It is true that, travelling around, visiting Men’s Sheds, you’ve never seen so much stuff being made.
The Men’s Sheds idea was introduced from Australia in 2009 by the head of the organisation in Ireland, John Evoy, the only son of a farmer from Co Wexford. In Australia the sheds – which is to say clubs rather than the structures themselves – were originally designed by Evoy’s mentor, Prof Barry Golding of the University of Ballarat, for elderly men living in rural areas, to provide them with company.
In an Ireland that is flatlining economically, the sheds have a more universal appeal. We have the footsoldiers of what we thought was a thriving economy, and the army has been demobilised. “There are roughly 40 sheds in Ireland, north and south,” says Evoy. “I get two or three inquiries about opening a shed every day.”
About half of the sheds, which are free to use, have their own building; the others might have a woodwork room provided, say, by the local VEC. The sheds range from Armagh to Killarney, and a lot of points between.
Only 20 per cent of the daily inquiries come from men, Evoy reckons. About 50 per cent come from community workers, and up to another third come from women: “Mothers, sisters, daughters,” says Evoy. Women who are worried about their men becoming isolated and demoralised as a result of unemployment, retirement, perhaps bereavement or just as a result of daily life.
Evoy spends a lot of time travelling the country, encouraging those who want to open a shed. “Most of the time, people already have everything they need to open a shed. It takes very little to empower them. The more I think about it, the less I do,” says Evoy.
“More sheds are popping up in small towns than in cities,” he says. “It’s mostly the small towns making the requests. Several people have said to me that they have noticed men walking round their town, long after they have lost their jobs or their business, wearing their working gear for the day.”