Better Together Awards 2014
Last week Anthony and I attended the absolutely excellent Better Together awards. Better Together is a nationwide campaign which aims to build support for hundreds of charities, community groups, clubs and associations across the country by encouraging the public to support these good causes and make a difference in their communities.
The competition is run by The Wheel, a national body representing over 1,000 charities across Ireland. Established in 1999, The Wheel has evolved to become a resource centre and forum for the community and voluntary sector.
Upon arrival at Dublin Castle, we were immediately greated by fabulous singing by the boys and girls from St. Josephs School Choir, Ballymun, accompanied by students from Alexandra College Orchestra, Milltown. It was truly beautiful.
After a bit of mingling and some rather tasty canapés, we were ushered to our seats in a packed hall where Masamba (pictured above) enthralled us with their captivating rhythms while we waited for the awards to get under way. Damien O'Reilly of Radio 1's CountryWide fame was MC for the night, with Irish Rugby Team head coach, Joe Schmidt, as an excellent guest speaker.
There were 9 awards in total, comprising of mainly video competitions in a number of categories such as Volunteer Charities, Large Charities, Small & Medium Charities and Sport, as well as the new National Motto Campaign award and the Charity Hero Award.
Any community and voluntary group, club or association on the island of Ireland was eligible to enter a two minute video about their organisation. Two minutes is not a lot of time to convey their organisation's story and highlight the impact of their work. However, over 100 organisations did just that, with 51 videos subsequently shortlisted.
My favourite entry of the night was possibly the one by Ciara Rigney who won the Young Filmmaker Award for her video entitled "A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved". There were many, many great entrants though, so I would encourage you to browse the videos on the Better Together website and in particular the winners' videos.
The evening closed with the Charity Hero Award, which went to Jim Kavanagh from Kilkenny, who has spent the last 20 years volunteering for Adi Roche's Chernobyl Children International (CCI), helping children, young adults and the elderly in institutions across Belarus and Western Russia.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable, and inspirational, evening showcasing how much good work volunteers, charities and community groups do in Ireland, and highlights just how important it is for the public to keep supporting charities during these difficult times. If next year's awards are even half as good as last week's, then I eagerly look forward to attending next year's event.
Stella Power Managing Director
As well as being the founder and managing director of Annertech, Stella is one of the best known Drupal contributors in the world.
