Taking girl power to the top!
A YOUNG Rathnure lady took her campaign for a bit of girl power to the very highest level recently after meeting Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross at the launch of the new national sports policy in Dublin. Nine-year-old Charlie Moore was a special guest at the launch alongside Olympic silver medallist Annalise Murphy and European Championship bronze medal winning boxer Kelly Harrington, in the wake of her campaign to encourage girls to take up sports and continue as adults.
Charlie penned a letter to Minister Ross saying: ‘I want you to help me to increase the number of girls playing sport.’
‘I want to help the GAA to get as much people to support women’s sport,’ her letter read. ‘I believe girls can do anything and girls can do anything that boys can do.’
‘I want more girls to try again if they have started it but gave it up. I believe they can start again and they should believe in themselves. They should believe that they can do anything.’
A camogie, karate, Gaelic football and soccer player herself, Charlie told journalists at the policy launch: ‘ That’s [not playing sport] bad for their mental health. I wanted to make them stay until they’re about 30, and keep on exercising and going to the gym and it’s not just girls but adults too. Every girl in our school definitely plays one sport but I want to make them play a bit more than one sport to help their mental health and everything and grow when they get older to be healthy.’
Charlie’s proud father John says that she’s delighted with the reaction her campaign has received, with Minister Ross describing the nine year-old as ‘an inspiration’.
‘She’s been on cloud nine the past couple of days,’ he said. ‘She was treated like a queen up at the launch. There’s also plans for her to go and meet the Minister again in August, along with a few female politicians, and possibly doing a tour of Leinster House.’
In the meantime, in between all of her own sporting activities, Charlie has vowed to continue her campaign to get girls active and she has plenty of ideas for the Minister as to how this can be achieved. ‘We can have different clubs and more after-school kind of things,’ she said. ‘Stuff like that would help the girls in sport.’