Footballers from the Dublin club’s men’s and women’s teams were among volunteers at the RDS packing presents for children living in direct provision as part of the annual gift drive last week.
The team of volunteers was joined by pupils from Gaelscoil Bharra in Cabra to pack toys for 4,000 children living in homeless accommodation and direct provision centres.
This is the eighth year the club, in partnership with Bang Bang, MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland) and DHL, have run this initiative, with generous donations from members of the public bringing in €80,000 to fund the purchase of the gifts in 2024.
Daniel Lambert, Chief Operating Officer at the club, explained how it went from a small initiative using just his house and a few cars, to needing the RDS and a large number of vans to transport the presents.
“It started with just a group of us. We were collecting money for buses for the direct provision centre. I was out there and seeing those kids in an industrial estate,” Mr Lambert said.
“The first year, we got 80 names and ages. We asked people to take a name and an age, go into town and buy a present. Way more than 80 people wanted to do it.
“People went off, brought a gift back, and we had them all stored in my house at the time. We brought the presents to them before Christmas in a couple of cars.
We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity.
“It seemed like people wanted to get involved and it was bigger the next year, we did it for about 500 kids and used Dalymount then. The last few years it’s grown to over 4,000 kids and we go to the RDS.”
Children from Gaelscoil Bharra went to Smyths Toys to pick out items for the children in Direct Provision, before singing some Damien Dempsey to the men’s senior team at the RDS.
“A school in Cabra came over to help us, the kids would all be big Bohs fans. The principal was keen to bring them over,” Mr Lambert said.
“They all went into town that day, they bought and picked presents themselves. They’re in primary school, so they were buying for kids their own age.
“They came over to help us out. The men’s and women’s teams were there too. Students teamed up with a player each and they went around packing the presents. Then they sang some Christmas songs,” he added.
