April 6th, 2020: On April 2nd, the Twitter account of The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) announced that Niall Horan will perform in support of the charity alongside other artists. Due to the lockdown caused by COVID-19, Niall and all the other artists will be performing from home and will broadcast from Instagram.
During this worldwide crisis caused by infection with the new coronavirus SARS-cov-2, all charities across the globe are suffering due to a steep decline in donations and fundraisers. ISPCC is encouraging everyone to pledge a donation either by going to their online donation page or by texting CHILDHOOD to 50300, which will result in a donation of 4 euros.
The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) is an Ireland based charity that works to protect, support, and empower children. One of the major services that the charity provides is a listening service, a childline. Children from all over Ireland can call or text for free 24/7 and 365 days of the year to talk with a trained volunteer. In addition, children can contact the charity online via a web-chat. The cost of the texts and the phone calls is absorbed by Vodafone through a partnership with the charity. It is estimated that ISPCC receives an average of 310,000 calls/texts/chats per year!
Once children get in touch with the charity they can take advantage of many of their support services. These are designed to support both children and, whenever possible, their families. One program that has been giving very encouraging results is the mentoring program. In this program, a mentor establishes a relationship with a child or a parent and helps guide them through periods of crisis by identifying social support available to them. The idea is to help both the children and their families build resilience so that new crises can be faced and overcome more easily.
A unique aspect of ISPCC is that it involves children through Children’s Advisory Committees. The ones that are currently operational are in Cork, Cavan, Monaghan, and Drogheda and include children/teens age 10 to 17, who meet with the ISPCC monthly. The charity indeed firmly believes that important insights on how it can improve its services can directly come from children and that children’s involvement with the work done by the charity can build children’s confidence.
The video below is shared from the ISPCC youtube channel.
Another program run by ISPCC is the Shield Anti-Bullying Program. This program is designed to provide schools and communities with tools to help tackle bullying. The program has two main components: 1) The Shield My School Programme: a self-evaluation toolkit created to assist schools in understanding types of bullying and how effectively the school is tackling them and 2) “Stand Up” – Bullying Report Tool – which is an innovative online bullying reporting tool where students can report bullying occurring on and even off-campus and receive support. In February of 2014, One Direction took part with other celebrities in the Shield Campaign, a campaign designed to demonstrate how important it is to take a stand against bullies and how you have the right to protect yourself against all forms of bullying (article here).
Finally, ISPCC recently launched a program supported by The Daffodil Foundation that works with families who seek International Protection in Ireland. This program promotes peer-support and guidance to help the integration of these families within the Irish community.
The ISPCC is supported mostly by donations and fundraisers and in small part, by governmental funds, the charity applies for, to run specific programs. Donations come into the charity from individuals and from corporations, trusts, and foundations. Of course, the work of the ISPCC is also supported by its volunteers. For example, it has been estimated that between October 2018 and September 2019, over 46,988 hours were donated to the ISPCC by volunteers across Ireland. Please consider pledging a donation to this charity either via text if you live in Ireland or via their website.
A Charitable Direction 