Community: From the streets of London

Recently I had the honour spending the day with a Homelessness Service on the Gold Coast. We spent the day doing a vegetable and flower garden makeover, preparing and cooking some yummy dishes, serving the residents at lunch and doing a major cleanout of some cupboards! We also met and spent some time with the residents and staff who inspired us with their resilience and dedication. Getting away from our busy CBD office for the day and witnessing one of our services on the frontline was a very fulfilling experience. It brought home to us how we are all linked in providing these vital services to our community. It is compassion, humanity and service in action and we all have our unique part to play.

For me it was a uniquely personal experience. This was the second time within a yearI had worked with a homeless service.

Both experiences stirred a long distant memory. Long distant but never forgotten. Allow me to tell you the story.

It was a smile that opened the floodgates. She continued to smile at me but a look of concern began to sprout on her face. I looked away. I was wet, and cold, and scared. I was alone amongst 8.8 million people in a strange city and this lady’s kind smile had made me cry on the Tube. I was far from the babbling brooks and caressing countryside of Ireland but events taking place would shape my future.

“Shhhh. Listen..” My dad had stopped in his tracks with a hand in the air to indicate that attention must be paid. It was three years earlier in the countryside of Rathmore, a lush rural community in Kerry. Innocent days. I stopped walking and cast my eyes over the vast landscape that enveloped the ferny bog land, meandering meadows, heather and the ancient mountains. My 17 year old heart filled with joy at the sound of the cuckoo singing her song as though she was welcoming us to her home.

We walked on. We had only gone a few minutes into our walk, an event that had recently become a ritual for dad and me. It was a bonding time. “Who lives there?” asked dad as we passed a neighbours house. “The O Leary’s dad” Dad knew this I thought to myself but said nothing. When we came to the next house he asked the same question. Again I answered knowing that he knew. A few houses later and by now a few miles from home I began struggling to name who lived in each house. He began providing the answers and named every household we came across dotted along that isolated road. On the return home he asked again to make sure that I had remembered the names. And then he stopped walking and as I stopped with him expecting the cuckoo song once more he explained “Community Diarmuid. We live in a community, a good community and it’s very important to know who your neighbours are. And as a car rambled past us and as they exchanged waves with dad he finished with “Always remember the importance of community” . Dad’s no longer of this world but I have never forgotten those words. Words that have shaped my view on community.

Sitting on that train in London three years later, community was far away from my mind.  I had travelled to London to take up a sales job, door to door selling fire safety equipment. For a rural young lad it was an exciting prospect. The company would reimburse your flight there (never happened) and put you up in hotels (2 stars) and feed you! (Tea and toast every morning only). They promised the world and delivered a hard life lesson.  So with less than a hundred pounds in my back pocket I headed for the bright lights of London, a green eared country boy who had only been to a much smaller city like Dublin on a couple of occasions.

It worked like this. At the crack of dawn after our toast we would pile into 3 or 4 different minibuses and we would be dispatched to various streets of London. Once there we would go door to door for a couple of hours trying to sell fire extinguishers, fire blankets and smoke alarms. Beginners luck granted me two sales on my first day so I was spared the wrath. About 3 days in and I hadn’t been selling.  I felt people simply didn’t trust people selling these items door to door but I kept those thoughts to myself. It was a freezing London morning and I had just done a two hour stint with no sale. With only a jumper on over a tee shirt I tried to keep warm by walking up and down the street. The mini bus appeared with my supervisor driving. He slowly go out of his car and approached me. “Any sales” he queried. I muttered a sheepish no and made the mistake of smiling. It was nerves. With that he unleashed a cascade of verbal abuse, the likes I had never encountered before or since! I stood frozen as spittle spayed from his angry mouth. I heard the words about been thrown out on the streets if I didn’t improve. I became aware of people stopping on the street to look but no offers of help came. It would have been a confusing looking scene. ‘Your jumper” he shouted. I looked at him blankly. ‘Take off your damn jumper and give it to me” he continued. He moved much closer to me. I complied. “Now you stand on this spot and don’t move and I will be back in an hour to take you back to the hotel. Slamming the car door he got back into the bus and left me standing in zero degrees in my tee shirt. But the cold wasn’t the only thing I was shaking from. I decided there and then that I was quitting this job but I couldn’t think of anything else. I knew though I hadn’t a penny on me.

Suddenly a parking ticket officer and another man were standing next to me. They had seen what had happened and here were members of the community concerned about this bewildered young man in his tee-shirt. After decline their suggestion to go to the police I explained the bind I was in. One of the guys was a foreman on a building set and said he could give me work but it wouldn’t be for 2 weeks. So I took the sites address grateful that there was light at the end of the hotel.

When I got picked up again by the bus my jumper was thrown at me and I sat quietly on the bus with the other young sales people who were also hushed. Perhaps their morning had been just as bad.  Arriving safely at the hotel I approached the supervisor and handed in two weeks’ notice.  Instead, despite my protestations, I was ordered to pack my bag and leave the hotel. So there I was in a part of London that I knew nothing about without a job, without a home and without money. One of the other salespeople who had seen my plight quickly came out to see me. He handed me a note of paper with a address on it – “It’s a homeless shelter for Irish people – so catch the tube there and good luck’ with that he quickly ran back inside.

It began to rain and I cried with the sky walking to the tube. Pride stopped me from contacting my family in Ireland. I didn’t want to be seen as a failure. Pride is a silly thing. I had no money for the tube so I raced in behind someone else at the barrier at the station and ran to the train as someone shouted angrily at me from behind.

The hostel took me in. I was given a room to share with another young man and that night I cried for hours, alone, scared and with a terrible deep sadness. How could the world be so cruel I thought as an exhausted body eventually drifted into sleep?

In the morning it was all gone. I had actually fallen asleep with my clothes and sneakers still on. My bags were empty. Clothes, shoes. Personal items, everything had been stolen from right under my nose.  All I was left with were the clothes I wore.


After crying for the first few days I began to take a look around me in this hostel. Homeless people were being fed three meals a day and had a bed and shelter. I saw staff, chaplains and volunteers all offering a helping hand. I was given some money to buy hygiene and other items. I could not believe the generosity of people. Why were they helping me? Why were they spending most days here offering support?  I found tears in my eyes would now come for a different reason. These people inspired me. And I wanted to help. I sat with a counsellor and asked if I could help in any way for the rest of my time here. There wasn’t any need for extra help then but we spoke of my desire to work helping others. I had vowed in my heart there and then that I would, if I could, end up working for the community.

I left after a few weeks with the address for the building site. I thanked these community members who had been there for me in this dark time and I walked with a spring in my step the 13 kilometres to the other side of London. I still had no money and no accommodation but this job offered hope. After the end of the first day’s work a worker had offered me a place to stay for the night. Before I left another approached me and handed me an envelope. They had heard of my plight and done a collection amongst the workers. In the envelope was a few hundred pounds enough for a deposit on a place to stay! For about the twentieth time in as many days I was crying again.

I’ve never forgotten that vow I made in London. Not long after arriving in Australia and after taking a dead end job again I walked away finally and absorbed myself in studying Human and Community Services at a TAFE in Brisbane. I have never looked back and have now spent over 21 years helping community through managing volunteers and volunteering myself.


I have seen how community works as a giver and receiver. Sometimes I still tear up when I see volunteers getting together to help the vulnerable in our society. Working in community will always inspire me. Community is the light that still shines despite the turmoil, despite the tragedy and despite the fear. Dad was right. We should know our neighbours. But in this global village we are all neighbours. We are all community.

As Leo Buscaglia told us “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

It did mine.

Dedicated to my dad