Hi everyone,

My name is Ciaran Mulhern and I am currently studying Civil Engineering in NUI Galway. I am delighted to have been accepted on to the 2015/16 100minds team to engage in what is sure to be an exciting and valuable experience.

Many of you probably aren’t sure exactly what 100minds is. To elaborate, 100minds challenges passionate, proactive and entrepreneurial students from around Ireland to individually start, manage and complete their own fundraising project with all proceeds going directly to charity.

This year, almost 1000 students from across Ireland have joined up with the 100minds team with the common goal of raising €1,000,000 for ISPCC Childline, which would make it the largest fundraising event ever in Ireland. In its previous two years the 100minds project has raised €138,000 for Temple Street Children’s Hospital and €247,000 for Barnardos and Blossom Ireland.

The money raised from this project will allow Childline to regularly train new volunteers which is required to contend with the vast number of calls they receive. In 2014, Childline received 600,000 calls and managed to answer 77% of these calls. Childline operates 24/7 but in 2014 their night service was almost cut due to the lack of available funds. This would have resulted in 45,000 unanswered calls. In 2014, Childline received 1,208 calls on Christmas day and 300 urgent risk of suicide calls. In 2015, there was 1,176 calls on Christmas day and almost 900 calls concerned about homelessness throughout the year. Without your funding, these calls won’t be answered, so no matter how big or small your donation, it will be greatly appreciated by myself, the 100minds team, and most importantly, Childline.