White Board shopping coupons in Hartstown

Supermarket campaigns such as Tesco’s computers for schools are usually national or even international promotions aimed at boosting the profile of the chain nationally and obviously increasing their market share and profit margins.

However, a voucher campaign recently launched by Eurospar in Hartstown is quite unusual in that it is very much a local project specific to a single store and indeed specific to a single local fund-raising effort.

Customers shopping in Hartstown Eurospar will now receive a voucher for every €10 they spend in the store. They are asked to place their vouchers in a large box in the store where they are collected for the adjoining St. Ciaran’s National School. For every 40,000 vouchers collected the store will donate an interactive computer white board to the school valued at €6,000.

“We have already got a fund-raising campaign in operation through which our parents donate €2 a week towards the purchase of these boards,” explained school principal Sean Sheehan. We have also got some very generous contributions from individual parents towards the campaign as well. These white boards are a tremendous teaching tool but unfortunately we get no assistance from the department to provide them. However we intend to provide them in all 25 class rooms as we always strive to maintain the high standards that we have set for our school and our pupils.”

Explaining the involvement of the local supermarket in the project, Sean said “we have always had a great relationship with Eurospar and they were our biggest sponsor last year for our 25th anniversary celebrations. They are actually one of the biggest employers locally and Willie Forde the Operations Director has always been a great supporter of St. Ciaran’s.”

According to Willie Forde, “we are delighted with this campaign as we always want to try to put something back into the community. After all most of the parents of the pupils are also our customers. Last Christmas they organised bag packing in the store to raise money for the white boards and this got us thinking how we could help with the fund-raising as well.”

To date the parents have managed to supply boards in 13 classes. Teacher Mairead Lynch who demonstrated the board with pupils of her second class when Willie Forde visited the school was loud in her praise of the new technology.

“It has been a huge advantage to the children,” she told Community Voice. “It also provides them with fun when they are learning. It also means that the children who may have found some subjects difficult are now getting much more involved.”

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