Bray Emmets get painting at St Catherine’s special school
THE players and mentors of Bray Emmets senior football team volunteered to do some painting last weekend at St Catherine’s special school in Newcastle.
In total, there were 33 pairs of hands helping out on Friday and Saturday, painting the main sports hall, two bathrooms off the sports hall, a classroom, some benches and a little walking bridge.
Some members of management are friendly with the parents of a child who attends the school.
They reached out to the family with the idea of the team helping out the school and they made some suggestions to run by the school management.
Once the school came back with the green light, club management handed over the fundraising and organising of the event to the players.
They spent Friday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. prepping, painting and cleaning.
The team had started a gofundme page and raised funds through donations. They then purchased paint from Crown Paints in Bray, who gave them a very generous discount on the paint. Left over funds of roughly €600 were donated to St Catherine’s.
It was a massively enjoyable day, according to club PRO Dylan Terry. ‘People brought food, drinks and snacks. We had a speaker playing music. A great team bonding session was had. The most enjoyable part of the day was welcoming some teachers, students and parents to their newly painted sports hall.’
The staff and students were delighted with the work done by Bray Emmets. They said that the hall was much brighter and were very pleased with the results.
‘On behalf of Bray Emmets Adult football squad we would like to thank St Catherine’s school for letting us in through their door, especially Eileen, one of the special needs teachers,’ said Dylan.
‘ The players and management knew that giving up one training session to help out St Catherine’s is only a small gesture of giving back to our local community, and to be honest the rewards were multiples of the effort, when we all saw the joy on their faces on Saturday afternoon. We would like to think this was replicated again on Monday morning when the other pupils went into those rooms. This experience only reaffirmed our belief that the real heroes in our community are the families and teachers of these special children. Wouldn’t it be great if this helped to enhance the connections between the GAA community and the special needs community over the coming years and Bray Emmets are committed to that by making this an annual event.’