Sustainable Cities and Communities
In 2023 we continue to keep Ireland trading and connected and worked hard to support our communities in the ways that we know best, such as looking after our most vulnerable, providing support to SMEs and encouraging school children to develop their literacy skills.
We quickly identified practical ways in which we could ease the stress of starting a new life for Ukrainian nationals entering Ireland. By working closely with government departments, we developed key supports and created informational videos in Ukrainian, which were shared via social media directly within the Ukrainian community.
Post Offices are valuable assets in the community, and we are proud of our continued commitment to ensuring that urban, rural and offshore populations have access to our products and services. In 2022 we placed teams into Ulster Bank branches to assist customers to migrate their current account to An Post. This was particularly important in rural areas for vulnerable and marginalised customers. We also collected €1.5m in charitable donations for the Creeslough community support fund, more than half of which came through our Post Office network.
We believe that community is about reaching out with compassion, staying connected, and sending love to each other. To celebrate St Patrick’s Day, we teamed up with six-year-old Adam King to encourage people to send “virtual hugs” around the world. 2.5m “Céad Míle Hugs’” postcards were made available at Post Offices and a “hug” postmark was added to all letters. We made a donation for every card that was posted and raised over €22,000 for the Children’s Health Foundation and Cork University Hospital Charity.
An Post supports national and city centre initiatives throughout the year by way of projected
images and colours onto the GPO facade:
• Adam’s Virtual Hug: Adam King’s Virtual Hug was projected onto the GPO in honour of National Hugging Day.
• Herstory: to celebrate St Brigid’s Day, the GPO was illuminated as part of the Herstory Light show.
• Vicki Phelan: A digital image of campaigner Vicky Phelan was projected on to the GPO to announce a feature documentary about her life. The projection was repeated to mark her death later in the year, in honour of her memory.
During the 2021/2022 school year, we underlined our commitment to supporting students and schools with our Brain Busters programme which is now in its second year. Our longstanding school handwriting competition was re-launched in 2022. We were overwhelmed by the number of entries from across the country which clearly showed the enduring popularity of this competition.
An Post’s support of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library programme, a literacy initiative whereby children receive a book by post every month from birth up to age five, went from strength to strength in 2022. We have covered the cost of delivering more than 200,000 books to young children in the Dublin 24 postal district since 2017, while almost 14,000 books were delivered to youngsters in Cork city in 2022.
Reading to very young children has long been recognised as an invaluable stimulus during early development. We continue to proudly support Children’s Books Ireland which champions literacy throughout our communities, and through our new reading guides we can help children choose the right book for themselves. The Bedtime Reading Guide helps steer parents and guardians towards books that children aged between 0 and 10 will enjoy.
Reading and writing are fundamental life skills that unlock countless opportunities and possibilities. Through our steadfast support of NALA (National Adult Literacy Agency) we encourage anyone who is uncomfortable with their reading abilities to engage with NALA’s many initiatives and programmes. Being part of their programmes can have a transformational outcome, and on International Literacy Day, we launched “Legends”, a collection of stories about Irish sporting stars written for new adult readers. We used our social media channels to spread the word and raise awareness of NALA’s services to help people across Ireland develop skills they might have previously thought were unattainable, by highlighting Linda’s inspiring story, championing “Legends” and raising awareness of NALA’s services.
We launched a Financial Confidence programme to help improve financial literacy and wellness, as part of our support for the UNEP commitment to financial inclusion. Some of the activities which we carried out in 2022 included:
• Developing a guide which highlighted a number of An Post services that help vulnerable customers take back control over their money, such as budgeting tools and savings services, including Bill Pay, our free Household Budget service, Money Manager budgeting tool, lodgement and savings services and information on MABS (Money Advice and Budgeting service).
• Developing a financial confidence e-book with John Lowe, giving our customers an indepth understanding of all financial matters across the key areas of spending, borrowing, saving and investing.
In 2022 we took actions to increase awareness of climate change and sustainability by providing accessible and interactive information to empower people to make positive changes that improve their quality of life and create a better society for future generations.
In September 2022, we invited the community to embrace sustainable living. In partnership with TheJournal.ie, we published a series of engaging articles around the UN SDGs to explain how they can be made real and form part of our everyday lifestyles. These articles presented practical ways to warm our homes during the winter months and highlighted the importance of supporting local suppliers and using public transport where possible.
Our Green Hub is a one-stop shop for information for homeowners on:
• Home energy upgrades, in partnership with SSE Airtricity
• Low-cost green loans for home improvements; and
• Low-cost loans for electric vehicles for greener living.
