Wednesday October 8th 2003

Childaid man gets Community Award

PAT HARTE

Tyrone breeds good footballers and it’s not bad when it comes to producing community workers either. The new All-Ireland champions scaled the heights of football stardom this year but will they ever get as high as their fellow county-man, Pat Harte, who has climbed Kilimanjaro not once, but four times.

Living in Sligo for the past twenty-seven years, Pat, from River Road, Cartron Point, is nominated for his outstanding work in highlighting the plight of poor children and literally going to extreme lengths to raise badly needed funds.

A Director and founder-member of Childaid, a national organisation which has raised over half a million pounds since it was founded four years ago, Pat’s devotion to helping poor and neglected children around the world began when he responded to an advertisement in a national newspaper four years ago.

“They were looking for people to climb Kilimanjaro to raise funds for children and although I had never been active in anything like that in my life, I decided to give it a go”, he explains.

After the first climb, Pat decided to form a national organisation specifically for the purpose of raising funds for under-privileged children and Childaid was born.

Three climbs and almost a half a million pounds down the line, Childaid is funding the building of a new school in a township of Nairobi. To date, ten classrooms, a toilet block and kitchens have been provided at the Primary school which is attended by 1,030 children.

Childaid is planning two further climbs of Kilimanjaro next year, from March 1st to 13th and from June 1st to 13th, and are currently seeking volunteers. Fifty-eight years old Pat will do one of the climbs himself.

He is married to Sally and the couple have two children, Jonathan and Corinna. Another important member of Pat’s team is his ten-year-old grandson, Ryan Lynch.

© Sligo Champion
& http://www.unison.ie/