3 minute read
Gilead’s Corporate Compassion
By RACHEL BUDD Horticulturalist at IRD Duhallow
On Friday 23rd June, IRD Duhallow Social Farming was delighted to welcome volunteers from Gilead Sciences in Cork to the IRD Duhallow Social Farm.
We have been undergoing massive groundwork to redesign our gardens to improve paths and accessibility to all, and have been developing new garden areas to increase our vegetable, fruit and flower production.
9 volunteers from Gilead Sciences arrived bright and early on Friday morning, ready for action. Gilead Sciences is a bio-pharmaceutical company with bases in more than 35 countries, including here in Ireland. Their Cork base is responsible for quality control, manufacturing of Hepatitis and HIV drugs, as well as the packaging, release and distribution of oncology medication worldwide. In Dublin is their global Paediatric Centre of Excellence, which focuses on how they can help children battling serious illness and disease. Their presence is ever growing with a €45 million expansion confirmed in March of this year.
The weather forecast was not good, but luckily the rain held off for most of the day. As always there was no shortage of work to do, from weeding the kitchen garden to covering the new beds, putting stone on pathways, pruning grapevines and for the brave, helping with the construction of the new 20 metre polytunnel.
Most of the volunteers work in the office, distribution and labs of their company and relished the chance to work outside and do something completely different for a day. None of them were afraid of the hard physical work and everyone got stuck in and gave it their all.
Rain stopped play at lunchtime, and the volunteers enjoyed lunch at the restaurant.
By the time it was time to leave, the Kitchen Garden was looking immaculate and the new pathways will make working in the garden much easier for our Duhallow Social Farming participants.
It was a great day and a great example of how the Corporate world can meet with Community projects to the benefit of all. If you have contacts in any corporates that have a Corporate Social Responsibility objective, we would be delighted to hear from them and avail of their assistance.
