Powered by Roundtable

Hey everyone, my name is Glenn Williamson, I'm the current Mr. World Ireland and I'm excited to share my charitable purpose with you which I've been working on over the past few months here in Cork, Ireland. Growing up in Toker, Cork, my journey has been anything but simple. I lived for basketball and even had the honour of playing internationally for Ireland. But then life threw me a curveball. Diagnosed with arthritis, a total hip replacement ended my basketball career. I found myself battling depression and anxiety, but that wasn't the end of my story. Fitness and becoming an accredited life coach became my new path. That with the help of family and friends helped me regain control and gave me a renewed sense of purpose. Now, I'm even more determined, thanks to winning Mr. Ireland, to share what I've learned with others. I focused on spreading the message to my Reset Your Mind program by visiting local clubs and schools as part of my charitable purpose project for Mr. World. I delivered a series of presentations teaching young people about the important synergy between physical and mental health. The students were really kind and I enjoyed my presentations. I then visited Ireland's leading mental health charity for young people called Jigsaw where I met with Kevin who showed me the important work they do. Thanks very much Kevin for meeting me today. Can you tell me a little bit more about the work of Jigsaw? Absolutely delighted to. So Jigsaw is an organization that supports the mental health of young people, young people to be 12 to 25. And by way of support, what we mean is that they can come in for one to one counseling if that's the thing that they need. If what they need is kind of general support, we have a website which provides kind of information material for them, their families, their teachers on how to support them through their lives and to make sure that I suppose difficulties can be addressed and overcome. And then what we do is we go out into the community and we try and deliver workshops which educate and inform adults and young people on how to resource themselves and resource others. So we make sure the society as a whole kind of gets more literate about what mental health is and knows how to support young people so difficulties don't get so difficult. So that's the gist of it. And the mission really is that all young people's mental health in Ireland is supported and imparted. So that's really what we're driving for. Excellent. Thanks very much for that, Kevin. I was honored to help. Thanks a million. I found with gaining my title of Mr. Ireland, I wanted to run an event to raise funds and awareness for the Jigsaw charity as it's so close to my heart. I called it Dance for Jigsaw, where we invited kids and families of all ages to have an active and fun day. We got the support of local healthy food vendors and businesses and what an incredible day it turned out to be. With the help of Billy Jean's Rhythm Dance Company, I raised over €4,000 for Jigsaw and gained over a million hits on social media, helping spread awareness of the importance of the Jigsaw charity. So guys, thank you very much for watching my charitable purpose project for Mr. World, which was titled Reset Your Mind, that I, as Mr. Ireland, used to make a positive impact on my community here in Cork, Ireland. I look forward to seeing you all in Vietnam. Thank you.