'I would say I have reinvented myself," Mary says. "Sometimes I forget that was me, years ago." Years ago, Mary (not her real name) was in a 25-year marriage to a man who was an alcoholic and "quite violent". Things got worse and worse until eventually she had to leave. She was so stressed she couldn't eat at lunchtime the first day she went to Elah, a counselling and community training service in Hamilton Street, in Dublin.

Today, Mary has completed counselling training with Elah, to standards laid down by the Irish Association for Counselling and Therapy (IACT), and is a confident, outgoing woman.

It is a transformation which Ava Stapleton, a senior counsellor with Elah, says she has seen many times, often among women and men living in flats complexes characterised by deprivation. "We have seen people from the flats complexes become professional counsellors," she says.

This is no small achievement. The requirements for accreditation by the IACT are exacting. Those (mainly women, but also some men) who achieve accreditation through the Elah programme have done a two-year course in Reality Therapy, another two- year diploma in counselling and many hundreds of hours of supervised work as counsellors.

Elah is located in a terraced house in Hamilton Street, off Donore Avenue. The area used to have a large Jewish community (there is a former synagogue nearby on the South Circular Road) and was known as Little Jerusalem. When Breda Hanna, who had been running personal development courses for Dublin Corporation in Tallaght, decided to set up a more structured training centre in the area, she sought a name to reflect its ethos.

Elah is where David slew Goliath and the Elah project is "where people come to meet their giants", says Maura Dunne, also a senior counsellor with the project.

When Mary came to Elah, her giant was fear. "When we were going through the separation, my husband was very unhappy and he was quite violent, so I was scared to death. I couldn't cope. Someone recommended coming to Elah for counselling."

Elah's main funding was coming from F┴S because it operated as a community employment scheme, training people in counselling, administration, hotel work and other skills.

Mary started in the kitchen and then worked in reception for Elah.

"I remember coming in and sitting down for my first lunch," she says. "I couldn't eat my food, I was so stressed and tense. I had no social skills and I was quite aggressive in myself. I had to book in for counselling again in order to be able to sit at the table with people."

She persisted, and eventually things got better. "People here have such heart for you," she says, "they just encourage and support you."

Today she is a confident woman, professionally trained in counselling. Referring to her children and grandchildren she says, "the skills I learned in Elah have been excellent for my family. We have our days, our ups and downs but there are no more victims in my family."

What would have happened if she had not discovered Elah? "I think I would have gone back to my husband and I would be in Portrane the psychiatric hospital. In those 25 years I was diagnosed as manic depressive and for 15 years I was addicted to Valium. I had to go to the Rutland Centre to come off it. I haven't taken a tablet since. For seven years I have had no stress and I don't suffer from depression."

Ava Stapleton, too, has found the Reality Therapy which is at the core of the counselling approach in Elah to be personally beneficial. "I have learned it, my kids learned it and my grandchildren can quote it to me," she says. Reality Therapy is a form of counselling popular with career guidance teachers and addiction counsellors, among others. Based on the ideas of American psychiatrist Dr William Glasser, it holds that people cannot control their feelings directly and should focus instead on behaving in ways which give them a reasonable chance of getting what they want.

What Joan (not her real name) wanted when she came to Elah was to break the cycle of alcoholism and addiction in her family. "My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. They reared us to become alcoholics or drug addicts."

Today, she says, "I have reclaimed myself" from a background of domestic violence and alcohol abuse. Without Elah "I would have lost myself." She, too, has trained as a counsellor over many years. She says of her children's attitude to what she has done, "I know they are proud of it".

She is proud of it, too. Referring to the transmission of alcoholism from one generation to another in her family, she says, "I believe that by changing my life I have broken that in my family."

Michael Gavin is a recovering alcoholic, drug addict and compulsive gambler. He gave up his addictive behaviour in 1990 and became extremely interested in personal development. He came to Elah some years later because he wanted to become a qualified counsellor. His first job there, on the community employment scheme, was as a security man. Today he is a counsellor accredited with the IACT and has his own personal development company, Compass Courses Ltd.

He is also deeply interested in men's issues and on occasion fought his corner with his fellow - female - students in Elah. "A couple of times I had to say, 'excuse me, I am a man, I am here in the group, I have an opinion'."

He is full of praise for Elah's tradition of helping people to qualify for counselling accreditation who could very easily be seen only as clients - people who, as Ava Stapleton puts it, "are put in boxes because of the area they come from". Theresa's Gardens flats are a few moments' walk from Elah and the Fatima Mansions complex is five minutes away.

Elah has two full-time counsellors and a rota of voluntary counsellors. Clients pay £5 an hour if they are unemployed, £10 if they are working.

Maura Dunne says Elah finds its trainees, whether in counselling, administration or hotel work, are quickly employed by statutory bodies and the private sector.

Today, 15 graduates of Elah are attending a ceremony in the Mansion House to be presented with certificates in the presence of the Lord Mayor. Eight have completed a two-year diploma in counselling at Elah and another seven are marking their accreditation with the IACT.

Elah's funding now comes from F┴S, the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, the Jesuit Solidarity Fund, the National Lottery and other sources.

As with many other organisations in the social economy, director Breda Hanna and the people who run Elah must constantly think of ways to raise money on top of getting the job done that they originally set out to do.

And like many organisations in the social economy it benefits the community and the country in ways which cannot be scientifically measured, but which are no less real for that.

"People coming here are really at their last," says Maura Dunne. "People are so broken, this is the only place they can turn to."

That so many of them emerge from the process confident and whole is a remarkable tribute to a very unusual organisation. Elah is at 48 Hamilton Street, Dublin 8 and can be contacted by email at elahvcs@iol.ie or by telephone at 01-4541278