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Dublin 15’s Hot Fuzz

The Special Olympics Dublin 15 Sports Club has been successfully operating in the area since 2003 – the year that Ireland staged Special Olympics.

There are currently 34 members on the club, which meets every Saturday morning in the sports hall at ITB but according to one of the club’s organisers, Bernie Stevenson, this is only scratching the surface. “The recent census figures would indicate that there are up to 4,000 people with special needs in the Dublin 15 area – which means that all of them would be eligible to join the club”. Members of the Hot Fuzz group

The Special Olympics movement operates a leadership programme for members. The Athlete Leadership Programmes, popularly known as ALPs, facilitates young people with special needs who are over 16 years old to develop leadership skills.

According to Bernie “the programme also encourages these young people to explore opportunities additional to sports training and competition and empowers them to take on new and challenging roles. Each young person selects a mentor to act in the capacity of personal assistant to help the young person to complete the leadership programme.”

Last May an ALPs group was established in the Dublin 15 club and at one of their earlier meetings its members decided to call themselves the ‘Hot Fuzz’ group after the recent comedy film of the same name.

The ten members of Hot Fuzz are now in the process of entering a project in the upcoming annual ABC Awards organised by the Blanchardstown Youth Service. For their project the group is seeking to attract new members and volunteers into the Dublin 15 Sports Club.

To achieve this members of the group have designed a poster which will be displayed in local shops and newspapers and as part of their publicity campaign they recently met Community Voice to outline the details of their work.

The Hot Fuzz group meet every month and have a full agenda for discussion at the meeting. They explained how they all worked on designing the new poster and some of the activities of the sports club. These include stretching exercises, soccer and basketball as well as balancing exercises.

Chairperson Laura Byrne explained how they also prepare teams for Special Olympics competitions while treasurer Jerome Moran outlined their experience the previous week when committee members went on radio on Phoenix FM to explain their project.

Secretary Chloe McMullen gave further details of the club’s work and said that anyone who wants more information should contact Ruth Feighery tel. 8213 840.

As well as participating in next month’s local ABC Awards, the Hot Fuzz ALPs Group intend to continue with their participation in the Special Olympics Ireland ALP’s leadership programme and progress to the award scheme.

The aim of the group is that each of the ten registered members will have received a bronze award or a bronze and silver award or a bronze, silver and gold award within the next three years.

The members of Hot Fuzz are Laura Byrne (Chairperson), Chloe McMullen (Secretary), Mr. Jerome Moran (Treasurer), Luke Downes, John Feighery, Neil McCrone, Paul Mullen, Aisling O’Mahony and Liam O’Malley.

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