A Kilkenny man is planning to run the 120-kilometre length of the Barrow track to raise money for autism services.
Dara O’Brien from Graignamanagh is also bidding to set the fastest known time for running from Robertstown in Kildare to St Mullins in Carlow this June when the Covid-19 restrictions allow.
It’s to raise money for AsIAm and the Saplings School in Goresbridge and Dara says it’s badly needed, telling KCLR News”I know first hand how chronically underfunded the whole area is at state level, there’s people that we know that send a child to Saplings School in Goresbridge and the difference in him from when he started going to school was kinda marked and they do some really, really great work there but again they’re pretty much underfunded so I always wanted to try and raise a little bit of money especially to put something back into the autism sphere”.
He adds “As well as using the opportunity to raise money for Saplings in Goresbridge and AsIAm who are another great organisation who do a lot of work in autism support sector that I get the opportunity of actually registering the run as the fastest and the official fastest known time and the thinking behind that is I might actually encourage maybe a few more people to check out the route to walk it or to run it or to run sections of it because it’s criminally underused really”.
How can you find out more information and/or donate? Dara says “You can look up gofundme and if you just type in Barrow Way my fundraising page comes up, it’s Running the Barrow Way for Autism, I have a website set up which is kind of a blog post and I’ll be updating that on a training and maybe some photographs of the different stretches of the Barrow and also a little bit of history of the Barrow and different sections, you’ll get some of the history there as well, the website is BarrowValleyRunner.ie”.
You can also click through to the website here
Meanwhile, read what a Kilkenny ten-year-old’s been doing with his classmates to raise awareness of Autism here
And see what local SuperValu outlets are doing as part of an initiative with AsIAm here
