"What I value most are the things I take from Foróige. The more you put in, the more you receive." - Ciara Fennessy, Ratoath Foróige Club

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Foróige-Notinuse November 5, 2014

Ratoath Foróige are busy as always and just last week attended the Youth Citizenship Awards Final 2014 in Dublin Castle. To our absolute delight, our Slí na Sláinte (Path to Health) project won us the enormous victory. We are the first victors from Co. Meath and are extremely grateful.

We arrived on the day and became immediately engrossed in all the event had to offer. There were new people to meet, judges to win over and speeches to be given. Our Chairperson and another member of our club talked the judges through our project while I, the Public Relations Officer, answered a few questions on stage and completed a radio interview with RTÉ Drivetime.
We were astonished when our name was called to receive the Michael B. Cleary perpetual trophy, named after a man who contributed to Foróige enormously until passing away earlier last year. The other projects were so outstanding, we were truly humbled. Innovative fund raisers such as pushing a bed throughout the town and amazing ideas like creating a digital map of a graveyard to make finding your ancestry easier and raising awareness of cystic fibrosis by designing organ donor cards for school children were all projects competing for the prize, and all deserving. We received the trophy and were met by joyful tears from our leaders on stage. We took photos for a newspaper with the trophy and ate the remains of a light lunch provided for us. It was an unforgettable day and we celebrated at home with food and met our local butcher/ historian to share our victory with him.

To me this day really embodied what I love most about Foróige, the opportunity to make new friends, to help make a difference, receiving the recognition for the hard work and tasks carried out by young people and huge learning curves like public speaking and confidence. What I value most are the things I take from Foróige, the more you put in, the more you receive. All members of Ratoath Foróige put in unbelievable amounts of work and you wouldn't believe what we receive in return.

- Ciara Fennesy

Ciara is the Public Relations Officer for Ratoath Foróige Club