Robert O Dowd – Volunteer with Serve the City and Food Cloud

Welcome to our fourth day of bringing you our amazing stories of volunteers who helped keep our country connected during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. After the changes Covid-19 brought to all our lives Robert volunteered with Serve the City Dublin & Food Cloud, helping to keep the vulnerable and elderly in our community fed.

My name is Robert O’Dowd and from the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic myself and my wife Orla Bird volunteered with Serve the City Dublin

As we are all too aware many lives have been turned upside down since the beginning of this global pandemic, and no one remains untouched by the unprecedented impact of this virus.

I have been in the event management business for over 25 years and run my own business based in Ballymount in Dublin, serving many corporate clients. In March of this year, like many others, my day to day world was fundamentally changed as events could no longer take place. During the initial days at the onset of this crisis I heard an ad on the radio asking for volunteers to come forward and I jumped at the chance to play my part in the national effort to ensure that the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society did not suffer unnecessarily.

Soon after I volunteered, Serve the City contacted me to ask if I would be willing to volunteer with them. Their primary aim is to mobilise volunteers to meet the practical needs of marginalised and vulnerable people in our community. I was delighted to play my part and to provide practical support to those in need – and to be honest to keep myself busy. They asked me to take on the task of weekly shopping for several vulnerable and elderly people. While this sounds like a relatively easy task, given I had not been a regular grocery shopper for my own family of five for some time – it came with its challenges! Deciphering writing, looking for unusual items and finding my way around the various different supermarkets with all of the restrictions in place all proved to be an interesting experience, and a slightly different day to day experience than event management – but a great one nonetheless.

Over the course of the lockdown I did the weekly shop for two wonderful people, both of whom were extremely grateful and a pleasure to assist. And if I’m honest it was fantastic to feel a sense of purpose for those months, to feel that I was playing my part, albeit in a very small way, in the national effort to combat the virus and help others in need.

When I finished my time with Serve the City – I started with Food Cloud for 10 weeks working in the warehouse sorting out all the food/product donations coming in from the different organisations and packing up orders going out to the different charities and organisation. I thoroughly enjoy this, as you were meeting lots of different people both working and from the charities and understanding what they did within the communities – I would recommend everyone to do a time in both organisations as it is very fulfilling and important to understand what is happening in our communities.

2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenge and worry for us all, however helping the community has been one of the significant positives