REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 2010 GOLD AWARD CEREMONY DUBLIN CASTLE MONDAY, 12TH APRIL, 2010
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 2010 GOLD AWARD CEREMONY DUBLIN CASTLE MONDAY, 12TH APRIL, 2010
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom. I am delighted to be here today at Dublin Castle for the presentation of the Gaisce Gold Awards and I would like to thank Barney Callaghan for his kind invitation to join you. This occasion is a special one in the lives of those young people who have taken on and met the challenges of the Gaisce Award and it is wonderful to see so many people here today from all parts of Ireland. I would like to extend a very warm welcome in particular to eight young people and their leader from the Sacred Heart College in Omagh who participated in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
On this special anniversary we celebrate twenty-five years of Gaisce, its phenomenal growth in Ireland and its impact on the lives of tens of thousands of young people who answered its challenge. They were changed, deepened, strengthened and stretched by the experience of aiming for bronze, silver and gold. They became wiser, more intuitive, more resilient, responsible and confident and the benefits of their investment in themselves and Gaisce’s investment in them have profoundly enriched their families, communities and our country. There are so many stories of the benefits of Gaisce among them the story of a previous Gold Award winner, Andrew Forde, who with Gaisce is helping support young people in post-conflict societies in Kosovo by facilitating the development of an award scheme there. The benefits cascade all over the world.
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said “if you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
That is what Gaisce tries to do, to light an unquenchable fire in the heart of our young men and women, a passion for life, a curiosity about what they can contribute to life and a relentless ambition to be the best they can be and give of their best. The imprint of the Gaisce Gold Award on your CVs is a signal to college applications officers, recruiters, employers that you are people of initiative, leadership, dynamism and self-discipline. It may well open doors to you in these early days of your adult lives and careers. But the imprint of Gaisce Gold on your lives will reveal itself over your span of years. It will have helped awaken in you a determination to be considerably more than a mere spectator on the sidelines of life. You have put down a marker here today that you are now what you intend always to be active contributors to your own lives, to your community and to our society.
You each get the same badge but you each came here by very different paths and the roads you will travel from here will be as many, as varied and as differentiated as each of you are. Gaisce’s challenge was to each of you as individuals, to see just how much potential you could develop in yourselves. It was and is a journey into the self, a competition not with others but with the self. It was also a journey into the world around, a realisation of how complex that world is, how unequal and difficult it can be for some, how much of its hardship it can be redeemed by care and consideration, how much of its strength emanates from good people volunteering their individual talents and packing them into a practical spirit that is both problem-solving and life enhancing.
The old Irish saying tells us “bíonn siúlach scéalach” – the traveller has many tales to tell. Our Gaisce Gold Awardees have stories to make us fascinated, proud and amazed. Each one of you makes us hopeful about our country’s future even as we face tougher times for you have shown us a capacity for fortitude, adaptability, creativity and generosity that is an ambassadorship without equal for the young people of Ireland.
In back of your success are those great corps of volunteers, the President Award Leaders or PALS, who guided and mentored you through the Gaisce challenges to this day of celebration. They are great people and they too help us to realise that at a time when the headlines are full of people who have failed our country, our country is full of people who define us differently, more authentically and with a humility as great as their generosity. The PALs are key to Gaisce’s success, as are the sponsors, the fund-raisers, the Board members, the professional Gaisce team, the schools, workplaces organisations and participants, families all of which create a network of endeavour to nourish and sustain Gaisce. They all do it because they believe in our young people, our country and in Gaisce’s capacity to bring out the very best in both. This day belongs to all those who contribute to Gaisce for the success of our Gold Award recipients is the only reward they are interested in. Please give them a rousing round of applause by way of thanks and now the loudest applause of congratulations to today’s Gold Awardees whose arrival on this platform is as much the beginning as it is the end of a great chapter in each of their remarkable lives.
It now gives me great pleasure to present the Gaisce Gold Awards to all those who have successfully completed their challenge.
Comhghairdeachas agus go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.