A CHARITY’S founder has said it has been hit with nearly an 80 per cent drop in donations because of the recession.
Peter Harris, founder of the Bubblegum Club, said “it is those who are less well-off who continue to give the most”. The charity which he founded in 1994 helps children with life-threatening illness by helping to make their dreams come true. It arranges “extraordinary outings for extraordinary children”, and has helped thousands of children and their families.
During the boom years of the Celtic Tiger it benefited from the generosity of property developers and businesspeople who would donate the use of their helicopters and contribute to annual fundraising events such as a charity lunch which helped raise tens of thousands of euro.
The current shortfall has meant what were once annual events for very sick and sometimes terminally ill children have not gone ahead. “The annual ski trip has not taken place for four years because it costs €60,000. We used to bring 60 children for three days to Alton Towers in England, and that has not happened either,” he explained.
Mr Harris said at its height the charity had taken in about €400,000 a year in financial donations, and also had the benefit of the generosity of those who could donate services and products.
Things had changed with the recession, and he estimated the fall in financial donations to be 79 per cent – placing its income now in the region of €80,000.
He was speaking in Louth at a major street party which the club arranged, with strong community support, for Marykate Tiernan (7), from Clogherhead, who is terminally ill with leukaemia.
Mr Harris said the club would continue to run, promising: “We are not going away but we are creating new ways of fundraising.” It is opening its first charity shop in Dún Laoghaire later this month.