Programmes & community impact
Four programmes. One chain of survival.
Prevention, recognition, response and recovery. Each of our programmes covers one link, and a chain is only as strong as the community holding it.
- 412
- Workshops delivered in 2025
- 14,286
- People trained since 2011
- 97
- Documented bystander CPR events
Programme 01
Community CPR & AED Awareness Workshops
Our largest programme. A free, two-hour, hands-on session run in the halls and clubhouses people already use, teaching chest compressions, recovery position, choking response and confident use of an automated external defibrillator.
Sessions cap at eighteen participants so that everyone gets at least twelve minutes of hands-on time on a manikin with feedback from a trainer. We do not use slideshows. We do not certify people into anxiety about doing it wrong — we teach that imperfect compressions from a frightened neighbour save lives, and that hesitation is the only real failure.
Every workshop closes with an AED walk: participants go outside and physically locate the nearest defibrillator to the venue, learn its access code arrangement and register it on their phone. Roughly one in three groups discovers that their nearest unit is unregistered, out of battery, or gone. We fix it before we leave the parish.
- 76
- Seminars in 2025
- 1,106
- Free BP checks
- 214
- Referred to a GP
Programme 02
Heart Healthy Living Seminars
Evening seminars with cardiac nurse specialists, dietitians and physiotherapists on the everyday mechanics of prevention: blood pressure, cholesterol, alcohol, sleep, stress and smoking.
We deliberately hold these in unglamorous places — mart canteens, credit union rooms, fire station bays — because the people at highest risk in rural Ireland are men over fifty who will not attend a wellness event. Free blood pressure and pulse checks run for the full hour beforehand, no appointment, no forms.
In 2025, 1,106 people had their blood pressure checked at our seminars. 214 were advised to see their GP within a fortnight, and 38 were flagged as urgent. We follow up by phone with anyone who consents to it, twice, because good intentions in a hall on a Tuesday evening fade by Friday.
- 6
- Active groups
- 1,940
- Families supported
- 72
- Partner-strand sessions
Programme 03
Cardiac Patient Support Groups
Monthly peer groups for people recovering from a heart attack, cardiac arrest, bypass, stent or a new diagnosis of heart failure — and, just as importantly, for the people who live with them.
Groups meet in Ennis, Limerick, Tralee, Clonmel, Cork city and Dungarvan. Each is facilitated by a trained volunteer who has themselves been through a cardiac event, with a cardiac rehabilitation nurse attending every second month to answer clinical questions honestly.
We also run a partners' strand. The husband or wife who performed CPR on their own spouse carries something specific and rarely spoken about. Those sessions are smaller, quieter, and often the most important thing we do all month.
- 48
- Partner secondary schools
- 3,412
- Students trained in 2025
- 180
- Student-led family sessions
Programme 04
Youth Vascular Health Education
A four-week module for Transition Year and senior cycle students covering how the heart works, what damages it over decades, and how to keep someone alive until an ambulance arrives.
Teenagers learn fast, they are physically capable of effective compressions, and they go home and teach their parents. A student trained at sixteen is a first responder for the next sixty years. This is the highest-leverage work we do.
The module includes an honest session on vaping, energy drinks, anabolic steroid use in gyms and cocaine — all of which we see in young cardiac presentations in Munster hospitals, and none of which is served well by moralising.
Bring a programme to your parish
If you can find a room and twelve people, we will find a trainer. There is never a charge to the community.