Longford National School raises a whopping €104,000 through the deposit return scheme

Melview National School have officially raised over €100,000 for their Astro Turf.

Having gotten the great idea to utilise the deposit return scheme as a way to fundraise and encourage recycling the school has seen an incredible response from students, their families and the surrounding communities.

“We had to fund privately for our AstroTurf and I suppose when I took over here as principal two and a half years ago I said as part of my five-year plan to have an AstroTurf.

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“Lots of schools have one now so we came up, me and five other brilliant members on our astroturf committee with ‘Pitch in for Melview,” explained Bryan Kennedy, principal of Melview.

The fundraiser can be found on Facebook if anyone is interested in pitching in.

“We came up with an idea where we jumped on the bandwagon of the Bottles Return Scheme and we got the children involved with that and it was spread far and wide.

“It was spread far and wide and the bottles have been coming in and we want to thank everyone for their generosity.

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“We’ve had a super group of parents who’ve helped us return the bottles because it is a lot of work.”

The students at Melview National School seem to be incredibly dedicated to their cause, Bryan explains.

“The children were really invested in that because it was linked in with our Green Schools Programme and just being environmentally friendly and recycling, so it’s something that children and their families really took on and really supported us with.”

The school is currently sitting at €104000 out of their €113,500 goal.

“We’re having our spring fling raffle on May 1 with super prizes again donated by people locally and the generosity from our whole school community, past pupils, parents, and the families involved in our school, and staff, it’s just blown us away, we can’t believe with the money raised in just under a year which is amazing.”

The fundraiser only began in May last year. The school is quite clearly amazed by the response they have received.

Now that the Easter Break is well underway the carpet is being laid for the AstroTurf just in time for when the Melview students return to school.

“We’re laying the carpet this week so when we return after Easter the children would be able to use the Astro.

“We’ve also completed a sensory room,” explained Brian, “And a walking track that will go right around the perimeter of the school so that’s part of the project as well which would be a brilliant asset to our school.”

“The children do the daily mile here every day so it’s great for their physical activity and it’ll just be a nice space for them to do go out and just get some fresh air.”

Once the AstroTurf is completed, Bryan says that all the donors will be honored on a wall dedicated to their generosity.

Anyone interested in donating towards the development can do so via: https://www.idonate.ie/
raffle/ SpringFlingSuperRaffle