Most of us know the Goal-Aidlink St Patrick's Day badges. The embroidered shamrock stickers have been raising money for almost 20 years. But did you know that the badges are part of a transition-year project? It's one of the biggest school fundraisers in the country, in fact: last year more than €200,000 was raised for the two charities.

At Blackrock College, in south Dublin, almost 200 students are hard at work, moving boxes of badges to a hall where they will be packed, addressed and distributed to newsagents around Ireland. The students have to keep track of who gets what, as well as the money that's due after St Patrick's Day.

"It's a big undertaking," says Keith Groeger, who is part of the administration committee, which co-ordinates the various aspects of the project. "It's definitely more challenging than we thought it would be."

The students are split into committees that are responsible for different aspects of the sales effort. One committee deals with orders from people living abroad, others deal with primary and secondary schools around the country.

The biggest team is the direct-sales committee, which sells badges to companies and distributes them to shops.

Students applied for places on committees as if they were applying for jobs, and John O'Shea, Goal's chief executive, visited the school to give students an idea of where the money they raised would go. (The proceeds are divided equally between Goal and Aidlink.)

Andrew Patton is also on the administration committee. "The response has been really good so far," he says. "Some companies have been giving us cheques up front for the badges and then distributing them for free among their employees. That's our preferred method, but most companies are taking badges and seeing how many they can sell. That's great, too, though."

There have been a couple of hitches. "We got a load of order forms from record shops, but we didn't have addresses to send the badges to," says Keith. "We have people working to sort that out."

Christine Nulty is the school's dean of fourth year. She says: "People have been very generous. Schools in particular can get a lot of requests to raise funds for charity. The teachers in this school have been very tolerant while this has been going on. We really need that sort of support."

This is the 19th year of Blackrock College's involvement in organising the fundraiser, and the students are moving with the times.

"The badges are available for purchase online now," says Andrew. "That was actually pretty easy to set up." "It's really gearing up now," says Keith. "We have hats and T-shirts, and we'll be out selling the badges on the streets on Thursday and Friday this week."

Buy the badges online at www.rockty.com or keep an eye out for the students around Dublin tomorrow and Friday. Badges cost €2 each, and all of the proceeds go directly to Goal and Aidlink