Grangecon group members meet President Higgins
MEMBERS of a west Wicklow environmental group recently attended a special reception at Áras an Uachtaráin.
Two representatives of Go Greener with Grangecon, Carl Rice and Jennifer Page, were invited to attend the event hosted by President Michael D Higgins and Sabina Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin on Friday, February 21 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Wheel, Ireland’s national association of charities, community and voluntary organisations and social enterprises.
In a speech to honour such groups, President Higgins acknowledged that they have a ‘critical role to play in helping Ireland to meet its commitments as signatories to the 2030 Agenda and the UN Sustainable
Development Goals.’ He also stated that ‘our greatest challenge is in delivering the consciousness, the will, to realise that the damaging, dysfunctional connection with which we have lived between ecology, economy and society has brought us to the edge of a precipice. We need a paradigm shift in our thinking as to how we will combine ecology, economy, and society so as to provide for the greatest of human needs.’
Go Greener with Grangecon were winners of the Mobiliser award at last October’s Spark Change Awards ceremony, which was organised by The Wheel in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin. The group has developed a range of initiatives with the aim of reducing the ecological footprint of the community in Grangecon.