Goal Link

The Goal-Aidlink St.Patrick's Day Badge Project is a charity run by fourth year students in Blackrock College, Dublin. We generate funds for the Third World through the sale of shamrock shaped badges, climaxing around St. Patrick's Day. We split our funds between two large Irish charities: Goal and Aidlink.
Click on our website for more details.

Goal is an emergency aid charity, specialising in quick response to save lives. The money from the sale of the badges goes to buying food, medicine, shelter and other immediate needs.
Goal website

Aidlink is a small Third World NGO based in Ireland. It was founded over 18 years ago, its core aims are to support medium sized long-term community development projects targeting basic needs such as education, provision of clean water, the care of street children and rural development. It also supports grass-root development projects, which encourage community participation in all stages of the project cycle to facilitate ownership and sustainability. Aidlink do most of their work in the most impoverished areas of Africa, Latin America and Bangladesh. It supports project such as the medicinal workshop in Ecuador, the rainwater-harvesting project in Tanzania, a street children project in Kenya and the women's vocational training centre in Uganda, and that is just to name a few.

To contact Aidlink write to:
46 Lower Rathmines Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6
Telephone: 01 4966956
E-mail: aidlink@indigo.ie

Blackrock College Goal-Aidlink Project

What do a large pot of money (Ł150,000), the Taoiseach, celebrities and models have in common? It's not a major business or an upcoming concert, it is but a little project run by 4th Years in Blackrock College which has grown to become the largest charity school project in Ireland.

Run entirely by students, the "Goal-Aidlink St. Patrick's Day Badge Project", was founded eleven years ago and has gone from strength to strength due largely to the dedication of the students and their willingness to give everything they can to make it work. We have high targets to meet each year, last year the project collected over Ł130,000 - a huge sum of money by any standards, particularly as each costs just Ł1! All of the profits are divided up equally between Goal and Aidlink to provide invaluable assistance to those who need our help the most, providing both emergency and developmental aid where it is needed.

Students control every aspect of the project, from badge ordering, distribution and management to advertising and sales. We even run a corporate charity event called a Duck Race. Where else would you find the Liffey turned into a 1km long bath tub, sporting a hundred yellow ducks in an epic race to the finish? The sponsor of the winning duck gets a trip abroad, this year to Prague. This year's event is on Saturday, 11th March and begins at 4.30pm from O' Connell St. Bridge, so come along and lend support.

Distribution and sale of the badge are divided up between the students into such areas as National and Secondary Schools and Companies. The key to the success of the event is the involvement of the students. As the results show, the students embrace the project wholeheartedly and look upon this not as a chance to 'bunk' class but as a chance to make a difference, more than any of us could on our own.

One of the biggest collection efforts occurs on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day when every one of the students goes out to an assigned parish and raises public awareness by selling the badge after mass. This year, thanks largely to the efforts of one individual, we have moved into Northern Ireland to sell the badge there. With any luck, we will find the same generous public support as we have found here! Once again, this is a year of firsts for the project, we now have a fully functioning on-line credit card ordering system (the first of its type for school projects), to allow anyone in the world to buy the badge. The credit card system and a lot more information about the project is available on the web at 'www.goal-aidlink.ie'.

We would like to encourage transition year students who would like to become involved in distributing the badge in their local area to contact us. As we cannot reach all of Ireland on our own we hope to get support from teachers in schools outside Dublin who may be interested in getting their 4th Year/Transition Year students to participate. To date Rockwell College, Scoil Mhuire and Milltown School are all involved in the St. Patrick's Day Badge Project. I would like to take this opportunity to give our most sincere thanks to these schools who are helping us, it is most appreciated. We couldn't do it without you. Lastly, we are officially launching the Badge on the 6th March in the Shelbourne Hotel. Among those attending will be the Tanaiste, Mary Harney T.D., Liz O' Donnell T.D., Ken Doherty (snooker player), Charlie Bird (RTE reporter), Dave Fanning (RTE Presenter), Martin King (TV weatherman / presenter), Liz Bonnin (TV presenter), Karen Chew (AA roadwatch), Emir Hoolahan-Doyle (Miss Ireland) and Chris DeBurgh. Speakers at this event will include Kyle Parfey (Blackrock College), Mary Harney and John O' Shea (GOAL).

Lastly, if any of you personally would like to support the project, the badges will be available (at Ł1 each) in newsagents, thanks to Independent Newspapers. Your support will make all the difference and help us to give the most we can to the Third World, to give them the help they deserve.

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