Shortly after An Posts's rebrand in March 2019, we launched the Address Point initiative to help those stuck in the ongoing homeless crisis in Ireland.

Despite being an established, modern, first world country, over 10,000 people in Ireland today are homeless, with a third of these being children. We at JWT Folk identified that when people lose their home, not only do they lose the roof over their heads , but they also lose their fixed postal address. By not having a postal address, people lose access to vital services such as education, housing, healthcare, social welfare and also being able to apply for jobs to get them back on their feet.

Address Point was created to give the homeless people of Ireland a postal address they can call their own. Like any other address, they are personal to them, accessible and secure, as each address connects to a post office of their choice, meaning post can be collected where and when they want.

The service generates an instant personal address, by signing up on a mobile phone or laptop, and users can use it for all all correspondence and only need to show their ID at the selected post office to collect mail. Should a user move to a new locality, a new address can immediately generated, linked to a new post office in the new location.

Then initiative was not only designed to help people deal with being homeless, but even more so to help them to get out of the homeless cycle by giving them access to the services and identity they may not have had for some time. Helping them get back on their feet, and pointing a way back home.

We partnered with every major Irish homeless charity, to reach those who needed the service most. Since its launch in March 2019, almost a third of adults living in Ireland without a fixed home have used Address Point to give them a fixed address.