Irish Examiner March 2012

Monday 26^th March 2012

Page 5

Skills swap lets pensioner stay in her home longer

Georgina O’ Halloran

A pensioner will be able to remain in her West Cork home for longer due to a skills and labour exchange which allows her to call on others to carry out chores she can no longer do herself.

Jennifer Sleeman, 82, who has lived in Clonakilty, Co Cork, for 20 years, was finding it difficult to manage her five-bedroom house alone.  But the Clonakilty Favour Exchange, which allows members to trade other skills and labour, has changed all that.  Ms Sleeman, who sprang to fame in 2010 after organising a one-day boycott of Mass in protest at the Catholic Church’s treatment of women, has had the gutters of her house cleaned and an apple tree in her garden pruned in exchange for her darning, patching and mending skills.

“I’m delighted, absolutely delighted,” she said.  “I think it’s a wonderful scheme.  I was thinking I’d have to leave my house but now I think I’ll be able to stay here for a few more years anyway.

“I’d been playing it in my mind.  Suddenly I realised there was help out there and there was something I could do in exchange.  It just makes so much sense to me.”

The grandmother of 13 said the scheme was excellent for community spirit.  Bev Cotton, a founding member of the exchange, set up just a month ago, said it has had an “amazing response”, with more than 30 people joining already.

“Our number one aim is to foster community spirit”, he said.  “People join, they declare their skills and the help they can offer to others within the scheme.”