Kerry Foods and its Denny meats brand is the new lead sponsor of Simon Week, seven days of action on homelessness in Ireland. Denny replaces the EBS Building Society for the week starting on October 4th. This year the theme is ‘Believing in people’, the people who need help and the volunteers who provide it.

An example of Simon’s work is its Dundalk community which helped 350 people living homeless or in emergency accommodation get into a home of their own. Kerry Foods has given €100,000 to Simon in the past year and will donate €1 to the charity for each person who registers online at http://www.homeis.ie/

Cawley Nea\TBWA gave a new twist to the directors chairs’ theme for this year’s Jameson Dublin International Film Festival TV commercial using London animation firm Blink Productions

Ondine, Neil Jordan’s new movie starring Colin Farrell as a Cork fisherman who catches a mysterious young woman in his net, opens the eight Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in Savoy 1 at 7.30pm next Thursday (February 18th). The Dublin actor is expected to attend the screening.

Irishman Ken Wardrop’s feature debut, His & Hers, is on at the Screen 1 the next day. The film presents frank and funny interviews with women from the midlands about their men. Michael Moore’s docudrama Capitalism: A Love Story is on at the Savoy on the Saturday.

Highlights from the following week’s line-up include Atom Egoyan’s erotic drama Chloe, starring Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore;  Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s crime novel Shutter Island and Woody Allen’s Whatever Works.

The ten-day festival includes a tribute to Michael Dwyer, festival founder and Irish Times film correspondent who died recently, aged 58. The series includes Oliver Stone’s Salvador, Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette and the Italian epic The Best of Youth.

The full festival programme is at http://jdiff.com/

An introductory guide for rights holders seeking to secure sponsorship was launched by the European Sponsorship Association (ESA) today. The 23-page guide is aimed at small organisations with properties to promote and newcomers to sponsorship looking to incorporate sponsorship into their business plan.
There is advice on the preparation, prospecting and approach to potential sponsors and tips about presenting, negotiating and servicing a partnership once a sponsorship has been agreed. Case studies are included and commentary showing the experiences encountered by rights holders and sponsors.
The guide is free to ESA members and is available to non-members for £50 (plus VAT) or €60.

Bord Gáis Energy (BGE) is sponsoring the thousands of festive lights in Dublin city this Christmas. The lights, which will be officially switched on in three separate ceremonies around the capital later this month, will use a consistent colour palette of warm and pure white to link the city’s shopping streets.
Along with the Grafton Street and Henry Street illuminations, new displays will light up other city streets. Nicky Doran, head of marketing, BGE, said that given the success they had with the Big Switch campaign they thought it would be a welcome gesture to give something back.
BGE has teamed up with the Pix.ie photo sharing website inviting photographers to submit festive shots. BGE will donate €10,000 worth of fuel vouchers to the Lord Mayor of Dublin Fund if the target of 500 festive images are uploaded to the site.
The illuminations, which have been in planning with the retailers and Dublin BIDS since May, will be installed by Cork firm MK Illuminations. MK lights up other European cities including Vienna, Milan, Berlin and Paris.

Irish sponsorships held between March last year and the start of this month are invited to enter an international awards scheme organised by the European Sponsorship Association (ESA). The awards are the only pan-European awards covering sport, culture, entertainment, media and corporate social responsibility.
The ESA categories are B2B, business to community, business to consumer, business to employee and an international award. Every entry will be entered into a free draw to win a complimentary delegate place at the Future Sponsorship conference and a one-night stay at London’s five-star Mayfair Hotel in November.
Last year, the international winner from 12 European countries that entered sponsorships was the Castrol Uefa Euro 2008. This year award entries close on Tuesday, September 25th.