Legend of Your Gratitude Heart 

The legacy you leave for tomorrow, the thanks you’ll receive for today

When it comes to your will, it’s only right that your family and friends come first in your thoughts. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also leave a gift to a cause close to your heart. Leaving a gift to MQI in your will is the most precious gift we could receive.

Farm manager Norah reckons the beech tree that watched over St. Francis was more than 150 years old when it lost its final battle to the weather. “Beech is secretive. At first glance it looks perfect. It’s only when it falls you find that it wasn’t.” In so many ways the tree mirrors Ireland’s addiction crisis – no matter the outside appearances, addiction can touch any life, any family.

And so an idea took shape, gratitude hearts from the ancient beech, crafted by the hands of clients in recovery, especially for donors that include MQI in their wills.

Norah sees the hearts as a way for the tree to live on. “What better can you have but to use the beechwood for the recovery work that clients do? They come here with so little, just a suitcase. Even after it’s died the tree gives them the chance to create something tangible they’ve made themselves.”

Sacred mission

A shop on the Farm holds the timber, and clients use a variety of woodworking projects as therapy. From the start Norah lets clients know the hearts have a singular mission. “They fully understand it’s for someone who’s including MQI in their will. The absolute gratefulness for that type of contribution to be coming to Merchants Quay, to sustain the work being done here, they wow about it when I tell them. And I do tell them. Because the hearts are something with a mission, a special purpose. We’re doing something for somebody else. That in itself is good for them.”

Clients choose one quality from St. Francis Farm’s ethos – such as Compassion, Justice, or Dignity – and burn it into the face of the heart. On the back, their own initials. They mightn’t have done woodwork before the Farm, but Norah tells them to “just feel the wood. Feel the wood, feel the age, feel the texture. And love it. There’s none of us perfect. Beechwood is the whole picture of any one of us, the bad and the good. It’s a huge support to have our legacy donors. We want to show that.”

Letting us know you’ve remembered MQI in your will is always up to you…

But if you have, or you do, the clients building new, drug-free lives at St. Francis Farm are honoured to craft a gratitude heart for you.

For details on how to leave a gift in your will, please download the leaflet here, or ring our own Emma Murphy on 01 524 0965.

Thank you for the good you do.