Local Voices

#37: First Fortnight Mental Health, Art and Culture Festival was born out of the crash to help tackle the stigma and start a conversation around mental health. In it’s 10th festival, First Fortnight was staged for the first time online in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Festival Programme Coordinator Edel Doran and co-founder JP Swaine join host Hayden Moore to talk all things First Fortnight, from it’s foundations in 2009 to current day. 

Glen Lally has become a successful businessman working out of Silicon Valley for more than 10 years. On this episode of Local Voices, we discuss the importance of goal setting, the growth mindset and how adopting a process will help you fulfill your New Year's Resolutions in the long run..

#35: 2020 is a year that will be remembered for a very long time. On this retrospective episode of Local Voices, Hayden Moore picks out seven key moments from the first year the podcast was in production.

#34: Host Hayden Moore is joined by founder and editor of The Echo, David Kennedy and journalist Maurice Garvey to reflect on 2020 and review the biggest moments of the whirlwind year.

#33: To travel or not to travel? That is the big question that Irish people all over the world have asked themselves as they zero in on Christmas.

Ever year there is this mass temporary remigration over the Christmas period and we see those tear-jerking scenes of families welcoming their loved ones home at the airports around the country.

But this year is different because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Host Hayden Moore talks to California-based Clondalkin native Glen Lally about not getting home for the festive season and New York resident Dee Ennis, who travelled home to Saggart to spend Christmas with her loved ones.

#32: The number of people accessing the St Vincent de Paul (SVP) Food Bank in Ballyfermot quadrupled this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and families living in poverty are facing a challenging time this Christmas.  Marie Cronin, East Regional President of SVP, speaks about their Annual Appeal.

#31: Over 600 children entered foster care for the first time in Ireland in 2019 and the enormous work that foster carers do to support those children has a profound impact. Bernadette Coventry, along with her husband Robert, fostered 50 children over a 38-year period and she joins host Hayden Moore along with Catherine Coventry, who they began fostering when she was just six-weeks-old. Sandra O'Neill also speaks about what fostering is, the misconceptions around fostering and the work she does with Tusla - the only organisation that provides a fostering service to the public.

#30: We take a trip back through Irish political history through the lense of ephemera such as election flyers, posters, pins and badges. Since 1982, when he was just 12-years-old, Alan Kinsella has collected approximately 50,000 items of Irish political paraphernalia. Alan speaks to Hayden Moore about his collection and his podcast, The Others.

#29: In the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, 521 families were supported by the outreach department of Saoirse Women's Refuge - triple the figure of that in years previous. Evidence also suggests that the number of domestic violence cases has increased since the onset of COVID-19 worldwide.

Outreach and prevention manager with Saoirse, Nadine O'Brien, speaks to Hayden Moore about domestic violence, the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign, and more.

#28: As you get older, you start to lose the people who you were closest to and making friends becomes more difficult. Through ExWell, three men aged in their 70s and 80s formed a friendship like no other and they have been nicknamed The Three Amigos because of their relationship. Dr Emmett Byrne also joins host Hayden Moore to speak about the exercise and social intervention programme that is ExWell Medical.