Special Olympics Ireland calls on the public to support future champions

Special Olympics Ireland athletes recently returned home from Abu Dhabi after a successful campaign at the 2019 Special Olympics World Summer Games but their work doesn’t stop there. For thousands of athletes, the training is continuing, in clubs right across Ireland, as they work towards regional, national and international competition. 

 

Special Olympics Ireland is calling on people across the country to support future champions by donating for its Annual Collection Day this Friday, 5^th April 2019.

 

Off the back of the World Games campaign, the sports charity smashed its initial target of 3,000 volunteers; over 4,000 people will take to the streets this Friday, to help the charity in its bid to raise over €500,000 in vital funding.

 

Special Olympics Ireland is a sports organisation for people with an intellectual disability. Close to 8,000 athletes benefit from the sports training programmes and competitions provided by Special Olympics Ireland in clubs throughout the country every day. The money raised on annual Collection Day will help the charity maintain and further develop these crucial programmes.

Brian O’Callaghan from Co. Limerick is a long-standing volunteer from Special Olympics Ireland who has just returned from lending his support at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Abu Dhabi. He said: “I've been volunteering for Special Olympics Ireland since 2014. My son Padraic was born with Down Syndrome in 2010 when the Ireland Games were on in Limerick and I was so inspired.  It gave us hope for Padie’s future.

 

“I’ve since volunteered at the World Games in LA and Abu Dhabi and the Ireland Games in Dublin, and every Collection Day, I'm also out shaking a bucket on O’Connell Street in Limerick, playing my part in supporting our future champions. I would encourage everyone that encounters a volunteer this Friday to please give generously, or jump online and make a donation, however small. I have seen first-hand the positive effect Special Olympics has had on these athletes and their families.”

 

Michelle Toner, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, eir added: “Following the immense success of Team Ireland at the Special Olympics World Games in Abu Dhabi, 2019 is a particularly special year as Special Olympics Ireland. This charity has improved life for tens of thousands of athletes and their families throughout the decades. On 5^th April, our colleagues in eir will be out in force, from Belfast through to Cork, doing what we can to help raise money for Special Olympics Ireland. If you can’t volunteer, you can still help by donating when you see a volunteer in one of 600 locations on Collection Day.”  

 

Volunteers, business and community groups are working hard to organise events like coffee mornings and sponsored walks for Collection Day. Supermarkets, shops and streets will be full of Special Olympics volunteers and representatives, singing, shaking and smiling from 7am this Friday, in what will be one of the largest organised nationwide fundraising events of 2019.

 

Special Olympics Ireland Annual Collection Day is kindly supported by eir.

 

You can donate in person to one of Special Olympics Ireland’s thousands of volunteers this Friday, 5^th April, online at www.specialolympics.ie/donate or Text Athlete to 50300 to donate €4 to Special Olympics Ireland.