This article is from page 15 of the 2013-02-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
PARENTS from a North Clare primary school are to use online “crowd funding” to raise the € 2 million needed to build their new school.
A new organisation entitled Build Mol An Óige will be officially launched later this week, with the aim of convincing people all over the world to pledge € 1 or € 2 to help fund the construction of the Ennistymon school.
In recent years, crowd-funding has become a popular method for bands to raise money to fund recordings, with fans pledging donations before a record is made in return for receiving a copy of the finished project.
This is the first time, though, that crowd-funding has been used to fund the construction of a school in Ireland or for such an expensive project.
Mol An Óige is currently based in a temporary location between the Ennistymon Vocational School and the Falls Hotel.
They are on the current Department of Education waiting list but department funding for the project is at least five years away.
“We are on the list to be built even- tually but it could take years and years before any funding is made available. We have this beautiful new site and we would just like to move there.
“The outreach online and on the social media is huge. Two million euro is a lot of money but we are aiming to reach hundreds of millions of people through this project – and if a million people were convinced to donate € 2, then we’d have our school,” said Stuart Woolley of Build Mol An Óige.
“Many times, with crowd-surfing projects, people set themselves a funding target and, if they hit that target, they will go forward with the project, and if they don’t then the money goes back.
“We are not going that way – we are considering these small, charitable donations and we will make some progress on the school no matter how much money we receive.”
The funding project will be officially launched in Ennistymon this Friday when parents, teachers and students from Mol An Óige will walk through the town to the site of the new school, beside the Teach Ceoil at 12 noon.
For more information or to donate, visit www.buildmolanoige.org.