Whitehall GAA club is the scene for Ms. Kane and a small group of TYs who volunteer at the Memory Café on the last Tuesday of each month. The Memory Café provides a relaxed environment for people with memory difficulties along with their carers/families to enjoy some tea and treats and to socialise with others.
These mornings often feature guest speakers and some relaxing ceol as well. The TYs are assigned a booth where they look after the people present that morning. With the strong central connection to Whitehall, both the attendees and the students gain a connection with other local generations and develop a greater appreciation of their community and its memories.
The next part is written from a TYs perspective of helping out in the café: On the last Tuesday of every month, a few people in TY have been selected to volunteer at the Making Memories Café. This is a café for people with memory difficulties like Dementia or Alzheimer’s. We were asked to help the rest of the volunteers to set up the café and make it look nice for the visitors.
The visitors soon arrived and we were assigned a table to look after each. We got to sit and talk with them for a while and topped up the teas and coffees in between.
It was an amazing experience and I would be very grateful if I could do it again.