The NF Community Meet-Up: A Reflection

LAST Sunday was the NF community meet-up at the Nancy Hands Pub in Dublin. It was a great success, where the NF community from every corner of Ireland got together and socialised in a relaxed manner. From a personal point of view, it was a personal milestone too, being the first event which I helped organise when I began the job in June.

Indeed, the roots of Sunday began in June, on my first day in fact – Friday June 2^nd. We were looking for funding from Dublin Bus for their Community Spirit initiative, and needed an event to pitch to receive any possible funding.

My first day, and one of my first tasks. I considered possible events; the pros and cons, the possible struggles and possible outcomes for any given event. I spent some time researching and brainstorming ideas and venues.

A coffee morning was the settled idea from day one, and the outcome didn’t stray too far from that initial idea. Different venues were discussed, but the Nancy Hands Pub was only settled as the venue less than eight weeks ago. All those who attended will agree it was the perfect setting; close to town, close to Hueston Station.

One big issue in the facilitation of this day was the funding – as previously stated, we had hoped to fund the event via the Dublin Bus Community Spirit initiative, yet by the time our plan was finalised, we had just missed the deadline to apply.

Despite this mishap, we liked the idea so much, plus we had already gauged interest online, we felt we needed to deliver the event, given how much we value the dedication of the nationwide NF community.

That is pretty much the backstory of what went into the day itself, while the people who were able to make the day itself provide many new stories. One man, Niall, came to his first NF event, having been in touch with myself and our chairperson Paul Fox over the past few months.

We were delighted to welcome Niall into our community. It wasn’t just Niall however, we welcomed Jamie too, a Dublin girl coming to her first NF event. There were old faces too, those who help make up our fantastic and diverse NF community.

Whilst there, it was relaxed. People had food, had tea and coffee, even some had pints! There was some exciting commotion too. We are working with a new non-profit called Selfless. Selfless will be implementing NF into their new database where donors can donate money to charities by searching specific categories which are of personal interest to them.

Each charity in the Selfless database will have their own promotional video, and their CEO Mark Kelly was on-site at the Nancy Hands getting footage of everyone at their tables, as well as conducting some fantastic on-camera interviews with our wonderful NF community.

So we were busy – or well, I was – while the NF community enjoyed their day. It went exceedingly well, and we were very pleased with the venue, so much so we expect to go back their again next year for further events.

We hope everyone who attended on Sunday thoroughly enjoyed the event, and we hope to see you all again soon.