Pupils raise funds for Township Trust

OVER the past month, third-year pupils at Scariff Community College have been busy raising almost €800 in aid of the Niall Mellon Township Trust.

Ms Rouine’s third-year class decided to raise money for the trust as part of their CSPE Junior Cert project, following a visit from local woman Carol McNamara at the end of last year.
Carol’s husband Gerry has been involved with the charity for a number of years and this November will be his eighth time participating in the builders’ blitz in South Africa. Carol is embarking on her second year as a volunteer working on the medical team.
Speaking about the fundraising effort, Scariff Community College pupil, Elenor Minogue said, “After receiving the talk from Carol, we thought it would be very fulfilling to raise money in the hope that we would be able to help and change someone’s life. We started by coming up with a list of ideas on how to raise the money. In the end, we decided to hold a bake sale as we thought that a bake sale would raise the most possible money.”
The bake sale was a huge success yielding €370. This amount was then added to €400 that staff had donated to the cause.
“This was a huge achievement for us as we have a very small school. We raised even more than we had hoped to and there was no food left. We then rang Carol and told her the good news. She was absolutely delighted,” Elenor added.
The pupils presented Carol and Gerry with the proceeds earlier this month.
“They told us that everything the foundation raises is matched by the South African Government. It was exciting to learn that the money we had raised would mean that a family in the township would have a house by Christmas,” Elenor concluded.
Meanwhile, in advance of their trip on November 12, Carol McNamara will launch a book based on her husband’s experiences in South Africa. Gift and The Irish Builders, which is loosely based on Gerry’s involvement in the townships, will be launched this Sunday in Jakko’s Pub in Scariff at 6.30pm.
Carol has been working on the book since she returned from Cape Town last year and is thrilled to see it finally in print. It is illustrated by Ailish Sheehan.
It is a short but emotional story of Gift, a South African boy who lives in a township in a little shack with his mother and sister.
One day he sees these strange white men arriving by the busload and starting to build houses and befriends one called Gerry from a place called Clare.
Carol hopes to get the book into primary schools and it has already been taken into some schools in Limerick, who are twinned with townships in South Africa.
All proceeds from the book are going directly to the Township Trust and will help to fund more houses.
More information is available by logging onto www.giftandtheirishbuilders.com.