View, January 2012


Page 4


‘I AM JUST AN ORDINARY MAN’


W


fact that he had spent hundreds of hours volun- teering his services to help others. As part of European Year of Volunteering 2011, Belfast City Council ran the competition to find the Older Volunteer of the Year, supported by Vol- unteer Now, through the Atlantic Philanthrophies. The aim of the award was to recognise and cele- brate the valuable work of volunteers, aged 60 or more, within organisations, groups and communi- ties across Belfast I spent three hours talking with Jim in the kitchen of his north Belfast home recently and found him to be a remarkable individual, even though he was keen to stress that he is an ordinary man launched into voluntary work through excep- tional and tragic circumstances. Both his twin


hen 75-year old Jim Pierce was awarded the Older Volunteer of the Year last De- cember, one of the reasons given was the


daughters committed suicide. “I first lost my daughter Georgina on July 15,


2009. Joe Murphy from the Lighthouse Charity (formerly known as Pips Project) was at my door the next day - since then I have been involved with the charity,


ter, Geraldine, also committed suicide. “She had been given lots of help but she just


couldn’t keep on going without Georgina.” Both women were in their 30s.


“Part of what I do is talking in groups to other people who have also lost loved ones through sui- cide.


Eight and a half months later, Georgina’s twin sis-


know if he would have had the strength to keep going. “If I had gone down the road of drinking, I wouldn’t be here today. “When I go to the Lighthouse charity in the morning, I will meet someone who is walking the same road. I will also try to help out in any way that I can.


Jim admits that without Lighthouse he doesn’t


“I want to keep on doing what I do as long as I can and I always pray that the tragedy of suicide doesn’t come to someone else’s door. “After Georgina died, we donated her organs. The organs were used to help four other people. “I was over the Moon to win the award, even though, as far as I was concerned, what I was doing was nothing exceptional. “There are really no words to say to someone who has just lost a loved one through suicide. All you can say to them is ‘I’m sorry’, because you don’t have an answer for them. I racked my own head for answers after my two girls died and went to the doctors and others looking for answers. They said, ‘Jim, if we had an answer for you we wouldn’t be sitting here’.”


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