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Tomorrow, 10th September 2016, we are celebrating six year of Siel Bleu Ireland; six years of delivering Adapted Physical Activity Programmes to Ireland’s older adults, helping them to improve their physical, social and mental wellbeing.

Established in 2010, Siel Bleu Ireland was the second “little sister” of The Siel Bleu Association, who has been operating in France since 1997 and Belgium since 2009.

Following in the footsteps of Siel Bleu France, we kicked off here with a pilot project in three Dublin nursing homes and from there we have grown from strength to strength each year. Today, 14 Physical Trainers across 20 counties deliver our adapted exercise programmes to over 2,400 older adults in nursing homes, communities, one to one and through Patient Advocacy Groups such as Arthritis Ireland, Alzheimer’s Society and COPD Support Ireland.

With the help of a sustainability grant we received from Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition in 2012, we were afforded the opportunity to scale our services to new clients and offer nutritional screening to our community participants.

Over the last six years we’ve seen numerous significant mile stones for our charity. One of our proudest achievements was our participation in and completion of the European Commission funded study, HAPPIER, which gave scientific validity to the benefits of our programmes for nursing home residents and the overall nursing home organisation .

In 2014, facilitated by Ashoka Ireland, we were introduced to Boehringer Ingelheim who supported us in the establishment of our hugely successful, Exercise, COPD & Me project, run in conjunction with COPD Support Ireland. One of the only community based pulmonary rehabilitation programmes in Ireland, the project fulfilled a huge unmet need for people living with COPD as recorded by the initial four groups of Stage One. The project went on to receive two commendations at the Irish Healthcare Awards in 2015. Also, last year we were awarded a grant by the Medtronic Foundation to scale the project to an additional eight groups.

Within the next year we aim to expand our reach to all 26 counties, offering affordable and accessible programmes to whomever wishes to benefit form the positive effects of exercising. By 2019, we aim to deliver programmes to 5000 older adults each week, offering employment to 30 people.

“With a continuously ageing population, there is a severe deficit for preventative services for older adults, to ensure they years which have been added to our lives are lived independently and full,” says Thomas McCabe, Siel Bleu Ireland, National Manager, “That’s why services like Siel Bleu Ireland are so important, shifting the focus from curative to prevention, which can help counteract sedentary behaviours and issues associated age related decline.”

We would like to thank all our partners and funders over the last six years who have supported us along this journey. But most of all we’d like to thank all our participants, for you are our continuous inspiration to keep doing what we do. Your achievements are our achievements!

Thank you!