THERE was a multitude of areas in which Michael Davitt’s, Swatragh impressed the judges who granted them the Club Wellbeing Award, but among their most notable projects was one of the most understated.
The very definition of a GAA club is that it’s there to serve and enhance the community around it.
On Saturday nights, they run bingo at the clubhouse. It runs at a financial loss of between £50 and £70 a week. But when there was a decision to be made, they made the right one.
“It’s on every Saturday night and there’s older people coming and that’s their night out. There’s a bingo committee there, they’re passionate about it and we decided to keep it going because it’s not that big a financial loss,” said the club’s Health and Well-being Officer, Seamus Kearney.
“Most of the things we do aren’t money-making, you only hold them to get people to come and maybe charge to cover yourself.
“But you get other uplifts because more people become involved and become members, so it has other benefits foreby financial.”
Kearney, a Derry city based firefighter by trade, was appointed as the Health and Well-being Officer “purely because I knew how to work a defibrillator”.
Since then, they’ve developed an eight-person sub-committee that has organised and run all manner of events with the aim of improving the physical, social and mental health of the parishioners.
Kearney heads it along with Martin Quinn, Maire McAtamney, Maura Quinn, Mairead Bradley, Lee McGuckin, Mary Bradley and Teeny Quinn.
“Croke Park were doing a Healthy Club project and we entered it. We entered into phase two of that and we got a lot of help from Croke Park, and we developed a three-year action plan based on physical health, social health, mental health and environmental issues. We got ideas from the public and started developing them.
“We did our six week bootcamp, Swavival of the Fittest, and then delivered some training programmes about mental health and suicide awareness. We held defib training.”
And when they arranged for the Action Cancer bus to visit the village, there was a very real benefit.
“We had the Action Cancer bus down and we actually had someone who got a positive test from that and detected breast cancer. That was a real benefit to people in the community.”
Among their other initiatives were Swavival of the Fittest, a health kick with a difference, where each team had to have at least one female and one person over 35 years of age.
They also held Mission Slimpossible and Swacycle, the latter catering for people of all ages and cycling abilities to engage as much of the community as they could.
“One of the things we wanted to do this year was gymnastics, to cater for children who maybe don’t like playing the traditional sports,” says Kearney, who played senior football for the dual club until recently.
“They might grow up to be a good treasurer or a good secretary. It’s about inclusion and making everyone feel welcome.”
