ROTARY FOCUS
THE SLIGO ROTARY CLUB HAS BEEN HEAVILY INVOLVED IN LOCAL EVENTS AND THE LOCAL COMMUNITY SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1965. FROM THE ‘MEALS ON WHEELS’ SERVICE TO YOUTH PROJECTS, THEIR COMMITMENT TO LOCAL CAUSES OFTEN GOES UNDER THE RADAR.
EVERY Christmas, you say them shaking their buckets on O’Connell Street fundraising for local charities. Everyday, you might meet them assisting Social Services with their ‘Meals on Wheels’ service.
Every week, members of Sligo Rotary Club give hours and hours of their time to assist the local community. An international group that promotes fellowship, the Rotary Club’s roots in Sligo date as far back as 1965.
“Initially it was the Rotary Club of Enniskillen, they were the people who initiated the prospect of forming a Rotary Club in Sligo. A number of them came to visit Sligo, they explained the objective of Rotary International to us, and there was one man in particular who would be the founding President in Enniskillen, Cecil Whailey, he was an inspiration to us. He came every Monday of every week for about six months to Sligo and travelled up and down to explain what Rotary International was all about, how clubs formed, what they should be involved in etc. We kind of said ‘if he can come all the way here every week there must be something in this’,” explained Sean Doyle, who is one of the founding members of the Sligo branch.
At the beginning, business people had to be invited to join the Rotary Club. Sean was one of a select few who was contacted about setting up such a club in Sligo. He explained: “Our founding president was the late Jim Gannon. Jim was a successful business man here, he was also Mayor of Sligo. He was a very well known person and a very enthusiastic person. Great rapport with people. He was a great leader for us. He, along with a number of others, came along then until we were formed. We got a charter from Rotary International and presented to us then in what was the Imperial Hotel in 1965. It was a big occasion.”
For the uninitiated, Sean describes the Rotary Club as “an international organisation of business and professional people who are united in service to communities, at local, national and international level. That would sum it up.” Niall Brennan, current President of Sligo Rotary Club, feels that the fellowship involved in the group, along with the opportunity to give back to the community is what makes it special.
“It’s a simple summary that’s very effective because we speak of service above self. That is the motto. When I was asked to attend my first meeting two years ago, it was described to me as Sean has just described it, fellowship and giving something back to the community. As we all get older in life, I feel that we should be giving something back to our local community. A local community thrives on people who are empathetic and who get on and are understanding. I joined for that reason.”
When Sean first joined the group, he was struck by the friendships he made: “The object was to assist in communities. First of all, to develop friendships. One of the things that impressed me the most, most of the senior people in Sligo, business people were called Mister. Mr. This and Mr. That. So I was Mr. Doyle. The first thing we were told when we were meeting together was that everyone was to be known by their christian name, the barriers were gone in a second. That was a wonderful way to start off, in those days, it’s normal now. In those days it was different. That helped to gel people together.
“We made great friendships. And that exists throughout the whole world. We can go to any Rotary Club in the whole world because we are a member of Rotary International and we will be welcomed anywhere in the world.”
Sean’s involvement spans five decades, but Niall’s involvement only began over two years ago. Nonetheless, he feels as much a part of the group as anyone else.
“I was invited to join, we have a very small group of people in our area. I was asked to go up and attend a meeting to understand what goes on at meetings. The first few weeks I was there I listened and I spoke to people like Sean and I spoke to others. I asked the question: ‘what is Rotary about?’ And some of the most humbling aspects of what I’ve done last year as President, would be to MC the likes of the ‘Just One Life’ and to stand on O’Connell Street for four days pre- Christmas and collect for St. Vincent de Paul and collect for the North West Hospice and have people say to you ‘ that’s great work, keep doing that’. In service above self, I get something from it, of course I do but it’s inside, there’s no financial reward, you don’t want financial reward. It’s very much about understanding what community needs and trying to give something back to community. That’s why I joined. I probably only discovered that the deeper I got into it.”
Such is the strength of fellowship within the Rotary Club, and clubs across the world that even at the height of the troubles, there was never an issue between clubs north and south of the Irish border.
Sean was National President at the time of the troubles, but it never got in the way of the club’s activities. He told The Sligo Champion: “Rotary in Ireland represents the whole island. North, south, east and west. We have a great connection with the northern people. I was National President during the troubles and part of your obligation is that you have to visit every Rotary Club in Ireland at least once, on an official visit, you’d go back sometimes for social visits. I visited all the Rotary Clubs up there during the troubles. We had a club here called ‘Interact’ for 14-18 year olds. I was friendly with the President of the Rotary Club in Derry. I said to him ‘is there any way we could get our two clubs to meet somewhere’ and this was during the troubles. So he said ‘I’m sure we can’. I went up and there was security all over the place and I thought ‘ there must be something in this when people will come out in the evening to a meeting place despite everything.’ I brought them to a neutral venue, Slieve League, down in Donegal and climbed the mountain and gelled them all together and they had to mingle. Some of the parents asked me if it would be safe for them to meet. The members here in Sligo had never met people from the north,” he said.
The Rotary Club participates in activities at local, national and international level. Every week, group members assist with ‘Meals on Wheels’, and have done since 1967.
“It’s a very humbling experience to deliver hot food to somebody that’s in need. We will all get to the stage where we are disabled from leaving our house due to illness, infirmity or whatever. That’s a long standing piece,” said Niall.
Sean added: “St Vincent de Paul were asking us in 1967 if we could assist in providing transport so that more people could get meals. They had only a few cars so they said they could extend the facility if we could provide transport. We’ve done it non-stop since then.”
Sligo Rotary Club is heavily invested in youth projects. The Youth Leadership and Youth Exchange programmes are two projects that members in Sligo have been working on.
“One that we’ve adopted last year and built on, was we’d been doing youth leadership. Sean mentioned Interact which is the younger arm of Rotary. We do youth leadership interviews every year. Rotary Ireland would have a youth leadership competition once a year where the winner would go to Strasbourg to European Parliament and observe,” Niall said.
“They would put themselves forward for selection to be youth leader, or to win the competition. When this person is put forward, they come back and they play it back to our team members and talk about their experience. One that we developed and brought back in last year was youth exchange piece. Sean spoke about the international aspect of Rotary. It’s pretty much in every country in the world. 200 countries in the world. We have links with every Rotary Club that exists. The Youth Exchange piece is run by Rotary Ireland and we interviewed TY students and 5 th year students Christmas week. We went to the schools and said ‘ this is youth exchange, this is example of it from before’. The student would pay for their own flights and pretty much everything else is paid for except expenses. It could be something they want to explore and they go into camps in Europe, or America or Australia. There would be longer term exchanges for people who would be older than TY students. That’s been well received last year. We have 4/5 people who have said they would like to do it, we would have to interview them to understand their suitability for it.”
Every year, members of the club stand on O’Connell Street at Christmas and fundraise for two local causes: “The remembrance tree, once a year, is outside on O’Connell Street and every member will sign up, and non-members, will stand on the street and shake buckets for SVP and the Hospice. This year we collected €15,000. That’s just money that those charities need to survive.”
Last year, Niall and a colleague ran a ‘Just One Life’ road safety awareness campaign. Having seen the campaign with Enniskillen
Rotary, Niall decided that this was something he would like to do in Sligo.
“I was terribly enthused by what I saw. North-West, Donegal, Sligo show brutal road statistics over the years. ‘Just One Life’ brought together stakeholders, the first responders, ambulance, fire brigade, police service, emergency consultants in the hospital, it brought together victims and they spoke to an audience of TY students to explain how the TY students’ behaviour can influence safety on the road. The decisions that every student makes, or anybody makes on a given day, influences how safe we all are on the roads. I was very taken by that.”
Editor of The Sligo Champion Jenny McCudden took part in the event, as did Dr. Fergal Hickey, Emergency Consultant at Sligo University Hospital.
“He came up with the hat on, the scrubs, and went through a presentation of what he sees when road traffic victims come into his ER. It was stunning. We had the best part of 800 students there over two half days in the Sligo Park Hotel. We got a little bit of donations from the students. It was a free event. For me to sit and MC that and look out, because the RSA were doing graphics and clips and car-crashes and post-mortems. To see the TY students stunned, it was an effective thing. We’ ll do it next year.”
Group members have participated in many international projects such as ‘Bikes for Africa’ and eliminating polio. The Bikes for Africa project, in particular has been adopted by Rotary Clubs everywhere. Sean knows the importance of eradicating polio. Having known someone with the condition, he used his connections in the Rotary Club to help.
“One man got polio in Cork. He was back here in Sligo and I remember hearing about it. They were saying that he had to get a lift everywhere if he wanted to go to work or whatever so I had heard of a three-wheeled motor car specially designed for people with a disability in England. I contacted one of the Rotary members over there. They used to use it at football matches over there, on the sidelines, for people with disabilities. I heard that Limerick had got one. We got one over here, brought it over here. He was able to go to work himself and had his own independence.”
The club have liaised with Loughan House, a low security prison in Cavan, to participate in the ‘Bikes for Africa’ scheme. Group members bring used bikes to the prison.
“They have a workshop there and they recondition the bikes and they send the bikes out to Africa for people to use to cycle to work, to cycle to school to cycle to get water whatever the case might be. It’s a brilliant example of local to international,” Niall explained.
Each member can adopt their own pet project once it is approved by the club. Members are encouraged to have a project that they would like to participate in.
“Our job is to keep challenging ourselves to do other stuff, and different stuff and make sure that the members are fully engaged and fully participating in the projects and doing stuff they want to do,” Niall said.
Currently there are around 35 members of the group in Sligo. Time given to the club can vary from three or four hours a week, to 30 or 40 hours depending on what project is currently ongoing.
“Rotary are changing the way we can recruit, the way we can hold meetings. The old rule was that you must be there for 60% of the meetings. If I do meals on wheels, if I spend four hours on O’Connell Street collecting money, if I do ‘Just One Life’ in terms of 20-40 hours I’ve put in preparing for that, they count towards my attendance, for want of a better word. We can have e-meetings now. Our club meets once a week, in The Sligo Park Hotel,” Niall said.
Dedication is key to membership of the club. And clearly, members enjoy it when they are willing to stay involved for so long.
“We said you’ve got to be dedicated to be in this club. That was a drive for us,” Sean said. “The enjoyment you see other people getting from what you do is fantastic. That is hard to describe but it is just wonderful. That’s what you get when you’re involved in communities,” he added.
He continued: “It was often said that Rotary is only a luncheon meeting but we say yes it is a luncheon meeting but there is a lot of business and projects discussed at it. A lot of people don’t know that.”
There are many challenges facing the group now, but maintaining membership and keeping people interested has never been much of a problem. Niall wishes to encourage people to join the group: “The lunch is the embodiment of the fellowship. It’s both genders. Some of the challenges that face us are people are getting very, people don’t have as much time as they had before. We’re doing the day job, raising families. As a nation, we’re probably not as outward looking as we were 20/30 years ago. One of the challenges we have is trying to encourage and maintain robust membership, and make it real for people so we can get them to give up their time.
“We would encourage people to come up as our guest and have a look at the lunchtime meeting. If there’s areas there that excite them, to get involved. We don’t promote ourselves as much as we have, part of my challenge was to try and raise our profile a bit last year. We need to say that we are embedded in Sligo community. We need people to help us with that.
“What I gain from it is knowing that we’re making a difference in our local community, through collections, meals on wheels, various projects we adopt during the year and knowing that if we weren’t there, that those pieces of work may not happen. It’s the ability to make a small difference.
“There’s got to be something in it for the members. There’s got to be reasons Sean is doing it for 52 years. You’d have lads who are there for over 30 years. There has to be something that hooks them in. It’s so under the radar that they just enjoy it.”