The University College Dublin (UCD) Agricultural Science Society (AgSoc) has donated a significant sum of money to two charities at a presentation last Friday, August 20.
The presentation took place outside the UCD Agriculture and Food Science Centre at UCD’s Belfield Campus.
This year, the two chosen charities were the organ donation community Strange Boat and the farm accident support network, Embrace Farm.
A total of €7,500 was donated to each charity bringing the total amount raised by UCD’s AgSoc to €15,000.
Every year, AgSoc hosts a number of events throughout the college year and donates the proceeds from these events to charity.
However, during the college year 2020/2021 this proved to be a significant challenge, as the country found itself in lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking to Agriland following the presentation, UCD’s AgSoc’s auditor for 2020/21 Diarmuid Lee outlined that it was “a challenging year” and said “the first time the committee actually could meet face to face was at the presentation last Friday”.
The Co. Galway-based dairy farmer and now former AgSoc auditor said: “Everything was done online and we did our best to raise all the money we could.”
He noted that Strange Boat was picked as a charity because one of the committee members had benefited from an organ transplant in recent years and Embrace Farm was selected “to recognise and support the work the charity does for those who have lost loved ones as a result of farm tragedies”.
Continuing, Diarmuid outlined: “We had a number of companies in the agricultural industry who kindly sponsored us with a number of generous prizes.”
He noted: “A raffle took place at Christmas and another raffle took place during the summer”.
The biggest fundraiser event in AgSoc’s calendar year is traditionally the second week of second semester when the much renowned ‘AgWeek’ takes place.
However, this year, due to Covid-19 restrictions, the event – which normally takes place on campus – had to take place online, much to the disappointment of many of UCD’s Agricultural Science students.
However, despite the challenges, Diarmuid and his AgSoc team still managed to run the week ‘virtually’ and many of the events such as ‘Ag’s Got Talent’ and the ‘Milk Race’ took place online.
Concluding, Diarmuid thanked all who supported AgSoc during the year and gave his best wishes to Shauna Jager, the AgSoc auditor for the college year 2021/22.