Pharmaceutical Company’s Dublin Employees Join Forces for School Playground Facelift During Annual Volunteering Week

- 146 volunteers from four AbbVie sites across Dublin come together to refurbish outdoor recreational facilities at Our Lady Immaculate Senior School, Darndale

- Nationally, almost 1,100 employees from eight AbbVie sites in Cork, Dublin, Sligo and Mayo contribute over 3,150 volunteer hours to company’s Week of Possibilities initiative

- Work in Ireland is part of wider international outreach involving 15,000 AbbVie volunteers from 50 countries

Dublin, July 2022 – AbbVie, a global biopharmaceutical company which has four locations in Dublin, recently celebrated its seventh annual Week of Possibilities. The initiative, which was put on pause for two years due to the pandemic, is the company’s signature community volunteering programme

In Dublin, 146 AbbVie employees from the company’s manufacturing facilities and offices in Clonshaugh, Citywest, Santry and Earlsfort Terrace jointly helped rejuvenate school grounds at Our Lady Immaculate Senior School, Darndale.

The north Dublin school, which employs 26 teachers and eight special needs assistants, supports 200 pupils from 3^rd to 6^th class.

AbbVie volunteers spent 550 hours across the week restoring playground markings, creating a new sensory area, undertaking extensive tree and shrub planting, and painted external walls, fences, and benches across the school grounds.

Speaking about the positive impact of the Week of Possibilities outreach, Shane Loftus, Principal, Our Lady Immaculate Senior School in Darndale said:

“A yard project had been a key item on our Student Council agenda for the past few years, so we were delighted that the promise of minor improvements was going to be replaced with the reality of major improvements.

“Given financial restrictions, we wouldn’t be able to complete such an amazing project by ourselves. Volunteer Ireland, along with AbbVie, made it happen. The impact of providing a safe space for children from the area to play and have fun cannot be overemphasised and it is something that will have a lasting impact on children’s’ lives. If school days are indeed supposed to be the happiest days of our lives, Volunteer Ireland and AbbVie have now made that the case for hundreds of children in Darndale.”

AbbVie believes in making a strong commitment to local communities, particularly in education. Commenting on the company’s involvement in the Dublin project Mark Hildebrand, Plant General Manager at AbbVie Clonshaugh said:

“We were delighted to come together again in person to participate in the recent Week of Possibilities project in at Our Lady Immaculate Senior School, Darndale. Giving back is a cornerstone of who we are as a company, and it was privilege to make a difference for a school in our local community in this way.”

Tom Daunt, Executive Director, Supply Chain at AbbVie’s city centre offices in Earlsfort Terrace, said:

“Supporting local communities is at the heart of AbbVie's culture, and there is no greater example of this than our annual Week of Possibilities. I’d like to thank our employees who have given their time, talent, and efforts across the week to help transform the school’s outdoor areas so that they can be enjoyed by students, teachers and special needs assistants when they return in September.”