Students at a city boys’ primary school walked away with the honours recently at a national competition aimed at encouraging children to understand global inequality.
The third class pupils of Ms Eustace at St Patrick’s School, Lombard Street were the overall winners in the Our World Irish Aid Awards. They won the award for their project entitled “A Better School, A Better Place, A Better World”.
It was chosen as the best from a total of 1,700 projects submitted from 566 schools throughout the country. Some 15,000 primary school pupils from all over Ireland participated in this year’s awards.
The Galway project examined the role Irish children can play in improving the lives of children in other parts of the world and the importance of education in long term development. Through their research the students discovered that Burkina Faso, a country in Africa, had the lowest literacy rate in the world. Many children stay at home because their parents cannot afford to send them to school and they begin work at a very young age. Fewer girls than boys go to school.
The judges, in their citation, commented on the enormous amount of work that had gone into the St Pat’s project. They said they were very impressed with the dedication and obvious collaboration of the students. It was apparent, they said, that real engagement with the development issues had taken place. They praised the ideas and suggestions the pupils had come up with to make the world a better place.
The projects will be on display at the Irish Aid Volunteering and Information Centre in O’Connell Street, Dublin from next month.
To enable the children in Burkina Faso attend school and receive basic education the third class pupils at St Pat’s organised a fundraising soccer match between pupils and staff and raised more than €880.
Ms Eustace and her class attended the prestigious Our World Irish Aid Awards Ceremony in Dublin Castle recently and they were presented with first prize by Peter Power, Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs for Overseas Development.
The awards, now in their fourth year, encourage primary schools to think about the lives of children in developing countries and foster understanding of the Millennium Development Goals – the international treaty agreed in 2000 which laid down targets for improving people’s lives in developing countries.
