I do volunteer guitar workshops for Galway Simon: ‘I’ve made so many friends’
Michael Murphy volunteers with Galway Simon where he teaches guitar and soccer.
When Michael Murphy started volunteering for Galway Simon 20 years ago, it was “just shaking a bucket”.
It was all “kind of an accident” says the Ballyhaunis native who has been living in Galway for seven years.
“A good friend asked, ‘What are you doing on Saturday?’ I knew when he asked like that, he wanted me to do something. He was going to Galway to help with a bucket collection — I went with him and that was the beginning of it.”
Murphy met a lot of volunteers that day and felt very welcome. Not too long after, the dad of two, who is married to Dolores and is in his 60s, was having coffee with a Galway Simon worker when she discovered he played guitar.
“She asked if I teach it. I said ‘yeah — neighbours, friends’. And she said there were a few Galway Simon clients — service-users — who’d be interested in learning to play the guitar.
“I said I’ll give it a go. I started coming to Galway every Wednesday afternoon — that’s at least 18 years ago now.”
While he now teaches guitar in the charity’s learning centre — a terraced house in Galway — he started the lessons in a garage.
“We secured some guitars here and there. I found friends who had guitars in their attics that they weren’t using — we got enough. Over time, more clients started coming. The nature of it is they come and go, they mightn’t be there every week — it’s open to any client to come when they’re available.”
Observing that the clients were perhaps not as confident as another student might be, Murphy’s approach was to have them learn a song on the first day.
“A very simple one like Bruce Springsteen’s Pay Me My Money Down. It only has two chords, and you could sing it as well. I thought it important they’d be able to play something simple after the first day, that they’d feel they’d learned something.”
He recalls a very quiet client, in her 40s, who didn’t know how to play anything on guitar.
“I always ask, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ Her favourite song was Livin’ on a Prayer. I said that if we learned and practised it every week, we should be able to play it after eight weeks. We were actually able to play it after six.”
There used to be “a great sound out of the garage” on Wednesday afternoons, he says. “Especially when we brought in the electric guitars and amps.”
He now teaches on Tuesdays, usually from midday to 4pm. “I look forward to every Tuesday — meeting the people, there are so many great characters. You hear about their lives, the different ways they arrived at Galway Simon, and how if they hadn’t come, they don’t know where they’d be.
“You can see the goodness in them — good people who just didn’t have the chance everybody else had, things went wrong for them.”
When we talk, he has just had a group of five in the guitar session. “They were all chatting away. The music just makes it easy; it distracts from everything else. People kind of lose themselves for a while when they’re learning and playing music,” says Murphy, who is delighted that Galway Simon recently received funding for more guitars through Music Network.
A volunteer also for Galway United Soccer Club, he coached soccer in Ballyhaunis, where he worked for 30 years in the local meat factory. “A good few of the players I coached [in Mayo] went on to play for Galway United, so I got involved with the club and when I moved to Galway, I was able to get more involved — I was their communications officer.”
A meeting at a Galway United match with a Galway Simon worker who ran weekly soccer for clients led to Murphy bringing some players in to meet the service users — eventually Murphy began coaching soccer at Galway Simon.
“We usually do soccer for an hour on a Tuesday after the guitar. You get a few of the same people at both.
“The soccer gets people together, having a bit of fun, interacting. It’s confidence-building, a distraction from everyday life. The year before last, we had a really good group and then a lot of the young Simon clients went to college, so we were decimated a bit in the soccer.”
Murphy was recently recognised by Galway Simon at their annual appreciation event, where he was awarded a certificate to mark his 20 years as a volunteer. “I never expected it. I see all the other volunteers around me who do a lot more work and who are so involved.”
Volunteering gives him a sense of purpose. “I just find it fulfilling. And I’ve made so many friends in Galway Simon. I won’t walk down the street many days without meeting somebody, either a worker or a client.”
Set up by a group of volunteers in 1979, Galway Simon is a leading provider of homeless services across Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon. The charity provides homes to more than 220 people at any one time — and also offers prevention and tenancy sustainment, health and wellbeing and social integration services.
- If interested in volunteering with Galway Simon, visit galwaysimon.ie/volunteering
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