The vision of Serve the City is to inspire and create opportunity for ordinary, every day people to do extraordinary things by serving the needs of others. We liken it to a water ripple effect:  People in our community catching the vision to serve the community and passing that vision on to others as they serve.  Little-by-little, one-by-one, lives are changed in small ways which ripple throughout the community.

While giving financially to various charities and causes is appropriate and commendable, there’s something powerful in direct, hands-on involvement.  When we help an elderly man with basic household chores that he can no longer do himself, we experience firsthand the eager reward of a grateful heart.  When we paint a room or a fence for a single mother struggling with illness, we experience the subsequent joy in a smiling face, knowing that we’ve touched the life of another.  With the spreading of this kind of neighbourly ‘compassion in action’ comes an incremental improvement in quality of life throughout our communities.

There’s an old African saying that we are only fully human through the humanity of others.  We in Serve the City believe that the more we invest in the health and well-being of our communities (i.e., the people in our communities), the more we invest in the health and well-being of our own families and of our own lives as well.

If we look around us in Dublin today, we can see needs everywhere.  The homeless.  The refugee.  The elderly.  The disadvantaged and the vulnerable.  We know them by their needs.  What if we knew them by name?