Kilcullen knitted teddies for child heart patients

Denis Dennehy, Guidance Counsellor CPC; Emma Doherty and Abigail O'Leary; Margaret Rogers, CEO of Heart Children Ireland; Kathleen Mitchell and Lorraine Hegarty-Kelly of SUAS Knitting Group; and Glenda Groome, TY Programme Coordinator CPC.

Thirty-six knitted teddy bears, each with its own name, are ‘going to be adored’, Transition Year students in CPC were told yesterday, writes Brian Byrne.

CEO of the charity Heart Children Ireland Margaret Rogers was accepting the bears, which had been knitted by a number of students and also by members of the wider Kilcullen Community, to be given to children waiting for or recovering from major heart surgery.

The handover was the culmination of a project led by TY students Abigail O’Leary and Emma Doherty, who came up with the idea of encouraging people in Kilcullen to knit the teddies using donated wool.

The concept was taken up by Abigail’s grandmother, Kathleen Mitchell, and Lorraine Hegarty-Kelly, both members of the Kilcullen knitting group SUAS. In addition to showing some of the girls’ classmates how to make the toys, they involved a number of their friends in the town to make them.

In the TY Year, a ‘naming’ initiative for each of the teddies, paid for by donations, also raised €96 in funds for the charity.

Margaret Rogers told those at the presentation in the CPC Sacred Space that Heart Children Ireland has been in existence for 30 years and has raised almost €3m which has been used to support children in the Children's Heart Centre in Crumlin, and the Young Adults Heart Unit in the Mater Hospital. Among the projects has been sponsoring of nurses, and the purchase of equipment including a special machine for the Children's Heart Centre which means that patients no longer have to go to the UK to have the use of one.

“We don't receive any Government funding, but we have always received great support from Cross & Passion College,” she said. “We were totally blown away when we saw the teddies. They will cause a big stir when we bring them in, and will be adored by the children who get them. This is a first in our 30 years, a new initiative, and it's going to make a difference way beyond what you might think.”

NOTE: This article was amended to correct Emma Doherty's name, incorrectly published originally as O'Doherty.

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