Willis is Ireland’s leading insurance and re-insurance broker, pensions, actuarial and risk management consultancy. They employ over 250 people in their offices in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Willis Risk Services (Ireland) Ltd is a member of the Willis Group (NYSE: WSH), third largest insurance broker in the world. With over 400 offices in some 100 countries, it’s global team of 17,000 associates serves clients across the globe.

Willis Ireland service corporate, small business & individuals with a range of insurance, pension & financial packages. With their commitment towards protecting their clients with their Client Bill of Rights, we invite you to contact Willis Risk Services today to see how they might help you.

Willis Risk Services (Ireland) Ltd.

Grand Mill Quay
Barrow Street
Dublin 4, Ireland

Tel: +353 1 661 6211
Email: info@willis.ie
Website: www.willis.ie

If you or a business you know are interested in partnering with Zest4Kidz, please contact Matthew Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com.

Connecting your business with a charitable project in the developing world has never been easier. Donations from Zest4Kidz Business Partners allow for 100% of public funding to go straight to their intended projects. That’s an amazing return on your investment. We are extremely thankful for each one of our Zest4Kidz Business Partners.

Be sure to check out the companies that have partnered with us.

How It Works:

Zest4Kidz is an Irish Children’s Charity helping children in desperate circumstances around the world. Zest4Kidz Business Partners are companies who have chosen to make a difference in the lives of these children. Our partners know the value of a good investment. This partnership is a chance for your company to highlight its social responsibility to the public. As a Zest4Kidz Business Partner you will receive positive PR, free promotion, and have a chance to tell a story that is truly changing lives.

100% Model

Here’s our crazy idea: Always use 100% of public donations to help children in need. We depend on Zest4Kidz Business Partners to cover our running costs. This is a fact that we let the public know time and time again. The public feel good knowing 100% of their money is going to its intended project and at the same time they feel good about those businesses who are making their 100% donation possible. Our Zest4Kidz Business Partners are dedicated to our mission – Fight Injustice: Love as Family: Empower Children – but they’re also committed to our 100% model.

Benefits to Your Business

• Enhance your corporate reputation
• Differentiate yourself from your competitors
• Demonstrate your commitment to being socially responsible
• Build employee engagement
• Create a family feel-good environment that will help you retain employees
• Tax relief for donations made

Choose Your Membership Package:

Please contact Matt Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com with any questions.

Louise is a Counsellor and Psychotherapist BSc. MIACP who specializes in helping couples and individuals. Louise has a busy private practice in Leopardstown, Dublin and currently manages Oasis Counselling service in Tallaght, on a part time basis. In addition to counseling she also trains therapists for Vital Connexions.

You can reach Louise at 087-853-3338.

If you or a business you know are interested in partnering with Zest4Kidz, please contact Matthew Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com.

Zest4Kidz is so grateful for the teams of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and surgeons who partner with us to change lives. Here are a few of those stories:

Isabel

Zest4Kidz has been working with Isabel since April 2011. At 4 years Isabel suffered from a bone infection which fused her left hip and shortened her left leg. When we met her she limped and walked with the aid of a walking stick. Her left leg was weak and could not bear much weight. She ran, squatted, walked and stood all with a lot of pain and difficulty.

“I walk to school every day. It’s very far from home and my legs are always paining” narrated Isabel. Despite her condition she walked 1Km to and from school. She lives with her grandmother because both of her parents abandoned her when she became disabled. Isabel had her first surgery in the summer of 2011 and recovered well.

Isabel received her second surgery this month and is moving closer to being fully functioning again. Thank you for helping us help Isabel and other children like her.

Susan

Susan is just one month old and was born with club foot. She was underweight because her mother was not feeding well during pregnancy and even after birth she could not breast feed Susan because she lacked the nutrition to provide breast milk. When Susan first arrived at CoRSU she was immediately put under a nutrition program due to her being underweight and began weekly plastering to correct her bones. Within one month we saw radical change in this little life as she put on weight and found new strength. In January she received an additional two new surgeries on her knees and the doctors are very optimistic about her full recovery.

Thank you for helping us help Susan and other children like her.

At the end of the day, kids like these are the reason we keep pushing forward. To do nothing is not an option.

Matt Kingsley
Operations Manager
“Fight Injustice: Love as Family: Empower Children”

“We celebrated as we sent Enock back to school.”

We met 9 year old Enock in early 2011 about 8 months after he’d been removed from school due to severe swelling of his face, abdomen and legs. His parents had struggled to get him to free local clinics but every doctor had sent Enock away, claiming there was nothing they could do. From September 2010-February 2011 Enock’s swelling grew worse.

He was receiving no treatment.

He didn’t even have a diagnosis.

Once in Zest4Kidz care, Enock was immediately admitted to hospital and was diagnosed with a treatable kidney disorder. Many Zest4Kidz supporters helped pay for Enock’s medical expenses and care and in September celebrated with us as we sent Enock back to school for the very first time in over 15 months!

But there are many more children like Enock out there who need our help. That is why we are excited to announce the Enock Challenge.

It only cost Zest4Kidz €413.43 to provide Enock with the medical care he needed for seven months! That’s one life changed…forever.

The Challenge

February is the month of love. Why not show love to children in Uganda who desperately need help. Change the life of another Enock by fundraising €413.43 by 29th Feb. 2011.

How? Bike, swim, bagpack, race, host a coffee morning, host a bake sale. Get creative. All we ask is that you share Enock’s story in the process. A great tool to us is sponsor.ie where you can promote the Enock Challenge and allow others to give on your behalf.

Help us bring hope to Ugandan children. Sign up by sending an email to info@zest4kidz.com

The Right Mind is a PR company that helps individuals and businesses communicate their message effectively. They produce and present exceptional leadership programmes for the country’s most prolific business people including sales, management and leadership training.

If you or a business you know are interested in partnering with Zest4Kidz, please contact Matthew Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com.

Stuy took some time to explain this idea a little better in an interview on our work in Belarus last year.

“I just wasn’t expecting to see what I saw out there. You know, one of the first orphanages I saw in Belarus in 1995, it was minus twenty-five degrees, there were no panes of glass in the windows in those days, and the kids were eating off the floor. And I just came out of the place probably more angry than I’ve ever been in my entire life. The kids shouldn’t be treated that way. I said, ‘I can change this.’ Then we got involved and I just kept travelling out, kept going, kept going …

After that I travelled extensively in Eastern Europe so everywhere from the former Soviet Bloc, to Romania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and even into the Middle East as well, working in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq … There’s certain places that really need help and then there’s certain places that are in absolute bits. I suppose what we did, rather than go by country, was we actually selected categories of kids, and so we had child prisoners, child prostitutes and child soldiers – that’s our gig, it’s what we do. For me they were really forgotten kids, they were kids who no one was helping and no one was working with and we said well we’ll step in.

“It’s very important to know what are we actually good at.”

My background is in psychotherapy and working with kids in Ireland with behavioural difficulties and with things like that, and I really wanted to try to help to see change in these kids’ lives so that they weren’t going back to the same things that got them in there in the first place. And I had worked in Ireland with the prison system, so I had some pretty successful programs that we had run which had seen prisoners recuperated, rehabilitated and back into society and being part of society in a positive way again. And I wanted to try and see if we could run something similar in Eastern Europe. We feel this is what we’re meant to be doing and not trying to be all things to all communities and all people.

I mean for us, I think as well it’s very important to know what are we actually good at. What do we do and do well? And for us we know what that is. You can end up having an organisation trying to be what they’re not and not do it very well and I think that can, long term, be more damaging.

I think it’s very good to have a coordinated effort going into a region or going into an area and finding out what others do there and therefore what can we do that’s different? More what’s our strengths that we can help with and can we work with another organisation who are in there? Maybe one who are in there helping to keep an orphanage heated and warm, but are the staff trained to work with young people? Because if the staff are happy, the kids are going to be happier.

“It’s about having a relationship with them and understanding their needs”

So how can we help them first of all to make their lives better and what can we do for them? First of all it’s about having a relationship with them and understanding their needs. It’s about developing that over a period of time, you’re not going to do it overnight. It’s about having constant contact, it’s about having backup programmes so if something goes wrong we’re there to help. It’s about being able to let the staff feel like they’re of worth, they’re cared for, and that they’ve got what it takes to be able to help the girls and the boys in these difficult institutions. It’s about sometimes seeing that the staff are just grown up kids who have been through the same system.

We’ve had pretty serious success in one of the girls’ prisons in Belarus, where they are not going back to the same things that got them in there. We work with them a year in advance of them leaving the prison and before they come out they’re given the skills and the tools that they need to basically be able to adapt to society again. And the way that we’ve gone about doing that has been good because we have worked ourselves with the girls in the prison, and developed a team of about ten girls who were previous prisoners who have left who are now the mentors to the girls who are in the prison.

And what I love now is that we’re seeing the fruit of the seeds that we sowed back then, which is that those girls felt a connection, love and that family environment and that they want to stay and be a part of it. So they have gone on, some of them have had very successful marriages and have had babies and now they’re still inputting into the girls in the prisons … Basically when you’re in the prison you think you have no worth, you think you’re useless, you think you have no place in society. So when they’re feeding back into those girls they’re doing it from a place saying I was here, I was here five years ago. And so that’s powerful.

“You need to ask what are your talents, what are you great at? What would you like to do with your life?”

You need to ask what are your talents, what are you great at? What would you like to do with your life? People want to do it for themselves. They want to have standing within their community and we’ve seen people just come alive in the different programmes that we’re involved with because they’ve got such high self-esteem for themselves because they’re doing it. They’ve got a job, they’re supplying the needs of their family, they feel good. If you just get handouts, what’s the point?

Irish people are great, but I think for many years, going into parts of Eastern Europe, we go in and we sing songs and we dance and we go around orphanages and we give out presents and then we leave. And that’s it – we’re gone. Happy Christmas and we leave. And I had a real problem with that – what about the rest of the year for these kids? It’s great that we can give them a Christmas gift and I’m sure they won’t get anything again; however, what about in January? What’s going to happen to them? Not only that, but what about this kid who’s not getting tucked in by anybody at bedtime and how’s their emotional needs and who loves them? Who tells them that they’re loved?

I think we can, as Irish people, think that we have the answers to Eastern European problems and we don’t. We think we know what to do to make things better and we don’t. The mistake we can make is go in and start handing out stuff all over the place thinking, ‘Let’s make their environment better, let’s make their houses look better, let’s bring them up to Irish standards’, and that’s not something that has to be done. Unfortunately communism has had a way of, you know, being a very serious de-motivator in these countries so, I mean, the Eastern bloc has got a grayness attached to it which communism has brought in. And in many cases it’s hard to lift that. So when I see our girls involved in uplifting and promoting and encouraging the younger girls in the prisons now in the same way we would have done, that’s what’s empowering, that’s what’s important.

A lot of it depends on our relationships, my personal relationship with them, my wife’s and our in-country workers and coordinators and how they get on with the governors and staff. They’re coming often from a background of the same difficulty as the kids. And I suppose we can forget about that and think it’s all about the kids; in actual fact, one of the assistant governors, who is a wonderful woman, was in a horrendous car crash and we were able to help her through the difficulties that she had, laid on her back for six months, you know? So quite often it’s relational, its developing a relationship so that you’re trusted to the extent that they allow us to do the work.

“We’re just trying to really let these kids know that they’re worth something, that they’re loved and cared for”

Why we do it is an important thing to address all the time, because I think quite often we can as Irish people … people want to help other people. We can do it because it makes us feel good or we can do it because we feel good and we just want to help other people – there’s a big difference. My philosophy has always been: if you feel full you naturally spill over into other peoples lives, and I’ve always wanted it to be that way, rather than people coming on trips just to get a feel-good factor, but that they’re full and they want to pass that on rather than the other way around. We’re just trying to really let these kids know that they’re worth something, that they’re loved and cared for, you know? Because they’re not being told that by family, they’re not being told that by many institutions, and we want to let them know that.”

Castle Estate Agents have been serving Co. Dublin through sales and lettings with offices in Terenure, Tallaght and Stillorgan. If you are thinking of selling, letting, purchasing or renting, please consider Castle Estate Agents.

If you or a business you know are interested in partnering with Zest4Kidz, please contact Matthew Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com.

Rob Carley met Jean in secondary school. The two were high-school sweet hearts and right from the start of their relationship Jean loved kids. Any time a pram passed her by she’d stop to take a look and give a smile. It wasn’t long before Rob & Jean were married and started to have children of their own. They now have 5 amazing children.

But Jean and Rob had big hearts, hearts that couldn’t stand by knowing there were children out there who needed help. So, in 2009 the whole Carley family packed their bags and flew over to Uganda to work with Zest4Kidz, helping former child-soldiers and children with disabilities. They met kids living on the streets in towns, kids abandoned by their communities due to their disabilities, and kids who couldn’t afford basic medical care. They met these kids and they were able to help them.

The trip was life-changing.

In 2011 the family decided to go back to Uganda again. This time they met some of the children they’d helped. They saw the vision for the Zest4Kidz rehabilitation home and met the kids it would benefit. They worked at a school for deaf kids, educating them, playing with them and most importantly, loving them.

Rob, Jean the the kids brought their love to Uganda. When they returned home Rob & Jean would stay up late imagining how they could help these kids more. They committed to raising the funds to build the first Zest4Kidz rehabilitation home.

And then the unthinkable happened.

In early September 2011, Two weeks after their return from Uganda Jean went to work at St. Mark’s and left at 3.30pm to come home. She collapsed in her car having died of a catastrophic hemorrhage.

We will never fully recover from this loss.

But we will move forward.

Rob and his family decided to continue raising funds in support of the Zest4Kidz Rehabilitation Home (which has now been renamed, the Jean Carley Rehabilitation Home) to fulfill Jean’s passion for helping children in need.

At Jean’s funeral, Rob’s sister Karen McSweeney approached Rob and said she had an idea for a book about a grumpy cow and asked if she could write it in Jean’s honor with funds raised going in aid of the Jean Carley Rehabilitation Home. The book would tell the Christmas story from the perspective of a grumpy cow who keeps being awoken by visitors to his stable.

Amazingly, only a few months later the book was written and illustrated and as they went to the publishers, a foundation stepped forward to cover the cost of printing the book! This means that 100% of the €14 cost price goes to the Jean Carley Rehabilitation Centre.

950 copies of the book have been printed with over 500 sold so far.

At the book launch, over €8,000 was raised alone.

Zest4Kidz is deeply grateful to Karen & John and all who helped to make this book possible. We would also like to thank Rob and his kids.

Most of all we would like to thank Jean and her example of love which not even death can destroy.

Buy The Grumpy Cow

Hamilton Risk provide risk management consultancy advice to many of Ireland’s leading organisations.

For more information or to avail of their services please contact david@hamiltonrisk.ie

If you or a business you know are interested in partnering with Zest4Kidz, please contact Matthew Kingsley at 01 206 3872 or matt@zest4kidz.com.