If you question the value of volunteering keep reading. There were three themes to this year’s Docklands Volunteer Day; Urban Art to remove Graffiti, the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and Community Engagement. Held on Friday 10th May this year’s Volunteer Day had not a drop of rain but it did have a record number of volunteers and supporters.

In 2017, partnering with Dublin City Council, we painted our first mural on the McMahan Bridge and we have now had the first 24 months graffiti and vandalism free in living memory. This year we painted a new dark blue background to brighten it up.

How the bridge looks now

How the bridge looked before

For our second urban art piece, we partnered with Trinity College to paint a wall on Grand Canal Quay. In recent years this Quay has become one of the main pedestrian routes into south Docklands with thousands of employees and visitors passing through every morning. There has been very significant investment on the stretch by local businesses in recent years but this particular wall was a
continued blight on a rapidly improving landscape. The wall is located where Trinity plans to build
their new Innovation District.

How the wall looks now

How the wall looked before

Planting pollinators northside

Planting pollinators southside

Community engagement was the last and perhaps the most important piece to this year’s Volunteer
Day activities. Our volunteers planted pollinators in the community garden of the Bath Avenue and
Residents District Association, planters around the area, trimmed gardens for the elderly, gardened
for St. Declan’s School and cleared a play area for the Enable School in Sandymount.

A new initiative this year was ‘What the Tech?’ where young tech savvy Docklanders went into the local community and helped people understand all the techie bits of their mobile phone. This new addition to the day was a great success and we are already planning to grow this activity for next year.

A special thank you to Bank of Ireland that gave our team of volunteers tea and coffee to start the day and another thank you to our friends in the Clayton Hotel Cardiff Lane who gave our hard working crews a hearty lunch during the day to keep them going. And of course thanks to all our sponsors, supporters including those not mentioned in this piece so far; A&L Goodbody, Citi, Hibernia REIT, Kennedy Wilson, Savvi Credit Union, The CCD, Waterways Ireland and of course all our volunteers.