Liquid Therapy emerged from Saturday night’s National Lottery Good Causes Awards with the title of the Sports and Recreation Cause of the Year and then the Overall Winner on the night.
It means an additional prize fund of €35,000 for the Donegal based Surf therapy project that we were delighted to have present as part of our 2019 Sport for Social Good Conference at the Open Championship in July.
This is the first time the overall prize has gone to a project from the sport and recreation category and was particularly sweet for Tom Losey and his team coming against such a strong slate of projects transforming lives and communities up and down the country.
The prize will enable Liquid Therapy to move to another level and will hopefully give rise to it being broadened to other parts of the country.
Up until this point, the project has survived based on annual funding of €5,000.
It provides ocean, surf, and water therapy for young people with physical, emotional, behavioural or intellectual needs.
Good Causes funding from the National Lottery allowed it to provide surfboards and bodysuits for a growing number of members.
The National Lottery’s contribution to Good Causes has increased over the past three years with €213 million raised in 2016 increasing to more than €225 million in 2017. Last year more than €228 million was raised by participants of National Lottery games all over the country.
This equates to almost €19 million every month and about €625,000 a day raised for Good Causes.
On average there are approximately 4,000 beneficiaries that receive funding each year.
The National Lottery Good Causes Awards honour the inspiring work and achievements of thousands of projects, clubs and individuals from all over Ireland who, with the help of National Lottery Good Causes funding have had an extraordinary impact on their local communities. The prize money on offer via the Awards is funded and distributed directly by the National Lottery.
Saturday night was an opportunity to highlight the impact of Good Causes funding and claim some credit on behalf of National Lottery players.
Because of the nature of the funding going through different Government departments, there is no straight line other than this in the public’s mind of where the money goes.
Here is the story of Liquid Therapy.
Image credit: National Lottery
