Are You Still Listening?
We are very proud to be teaming up with the incredible organisation, Samaritans Ireland. Their “Still Listening” campaign aims to recruit listening volunteers for their 24-hour telephone support service. We obviously have the ears of loads of great listeners, so we were thrilled to be brought in as partners on this campaign. Our podcasters were also very keen to be involved, so you’ll hear them encouraging their listeners to check out the website listening.ie over the next couple of weeks.
Samaritans have 13 centres in the Republic of Ireland, which is amazing, but of course, they are always looking for volunteers, and particularly in their Dublin branch.
“Because we never know when a person will summon up the bravery to pick up the phone and call the Samaritans, it’s vital that there’ll always be someone there not just to take that call, but to listen and respond to the person on the other end of the phone with empathy and patience.”
That’s why we (HeadStuff and The Podcast Studios), and our legendary podcasters have teamed up with Samaritans Ireland to find great listeners (you) all over the country. Together we are identifying the places and platforms where people go to listen to other people speaking at length, finding times during those conversations to mention the campaign, and encouraging them to use those skills to help people who want to be heard – who desperately need to be heard – at a difficult or delicate time in their lives.
And the best thing is you don’t need any qualifications to apply, you don’t need a counselling degree or any previous experience. If you can listen, and be empathetic, you can do this.
Anyone interested in finding out more and/or applying to become a Samaritans Ireland listening volunteer can start their journey at listening.ie.
I would urge you, excellent listener and wonderful person, to volunteer with Samaritans if you have the capacity, or can make the time. It’s worth it, for you, and even more so for the countless people who at one time or another need to pick up the phone and talk to someone like you.
You will see us posting articles and doing posts on social media, we’ll be promoting the campaign on our podcasts and sending people to Listening.ie. If you can share these posts, create your own posts with the link to Listening.ie and tell everyone about it, anything you can do will be a huge help.