Garda youth awards honour young people’s contribution to local communities

Some 23 awards were presented to individual or groups of young people for contributions to their local communities at the Garda national youth awards on Saturday.

The event took place at the Midlands Park Hotel in Portlaoise and acknowledged the contributions made in a number of Garda Divisions across the country.

This year’s awards were presented by Deputy Garda Commissioner Anne Marie McMahon and Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman.

Speaking on the day, Ms McMahon said she hoped the awards would bring “encouragement and confidence to these talented young people and allow for further growth in their futures.”

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Among those awarded were Alan McCarron and Cormac Brady, who set about visiting elderly in their community last year to check, fit and install smoke alarms, and warn of the dangers of carbon monoxide with support from Letterkenny Fire Station. They were the winners of the Community Safety Award for this work.

Valeriia and Adriana Golub, originally from Ukraine, were the winners of the Special Achievement Award. When the war began in Ukraine, they approached their school in Enniscorthy and “tirelessly packed donations from the school community”. The teenagers raised €8,400 for their home country.

Darragh Kelleher was one of the recipients of the Special Achievement award. Kelleher was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and was forced to pause his training with Bandon Athletics Club. Months of extensive treatment followed but, against the odds, he returned to athletics.

The first of the group awards was accepted by Maria and Afaf Syed – two of four young women that care weekly for the homeless in Dublin. The young women provide food and essentials while also tackling period poverty among homeless women.

The final award of the afternoon was presented to Saoirse Kelly. In July, Saoirse carried out “life-saving first aid on a boy that had been pulled from a local lake”. Her actions in the face of crisis meant that the young boy survived.