Cairde Cill Dreasa, or The Friends of Kildress, is something that allows people who are interested in the Wolfe Tones Club to contribute to it financially in a "planned giving" way. Our members agree to pay £20 a month, ideally by standing order. The money they contribute is "ring-fenced" for development work. In the short term that means it will be used to help pay for the second pitch and floodlighting we hope to put in place over the next year.

Year-on-year it takes over £50,000 a year to run our Club. Our weekly lottery and other events are used to raise that money. Cairde Chill Dreasa money meanwhile is invested in the long term projects.

As part of our succesful bid to the Sports Council for grant aid for our second pitch we set a target of 80 members for Cairde. That was reached earlier last year. We didn't immediately push on from there because for the second half of 2006 most of our fund-raising effort went into the Club's very successful Gala banquet. But Cairde remains a very important part of our financial planning.

We'd now like to get our Cairde membership up to 100. We appreciate Cairde Cill Dreasa doesn't suit everybody and therefore don't expect everybody to join. But equally we believe there are more potential members out there. Full Cairde membership costs the same as buying an Irish News every day and one pint of beer a week. For that you're contributing to the development of a Club which fields 14 different teams and provides good, healthy activity for well over 200 of our parish's young people.

What do you get in return? Well nothing more and nothing less than knowing you're helping make Kildress a better place. None of us should need any higher motivation than that!

If you're interested, contact any Committee member.

Bi linn is cuidigh linn!

Come and join us: do your bit!