Galway woman puts lockdown Christmases to good use – by raising thousands for lifeboat

A Dunnes Stores assistant manager has managed to raise over €9,000 for charity – by organising a Galway staff raffle during the last two lockdown Christmases.

After 14 years working with the department store, Maria Teahan was aware of many fundraising initiatives taking place in the store, especially around Christmas. But all of that had to be pulled during the pandemic.

So, she used her own initiative to set up a raffle for just staff in the six branches across the city.

The assistant manager at the Edward Square branch secured over 50 prizes for the raffle and raised €3,700 last year for the Galway Hospice.

This year she threw it open to the public by setting up an iDonate page and upped the ante, scoring €5,291 for the RNLI whose volunteers save lives at sea.

“I’ve never had to use their services thankfully – but I just felt during the lockdowns, mental health issues skyrocketed, and we relied of them so much more and they weren’t able to do their normal fundraising,” explained Maria.

“They so deserve the support. I met one of their volunteers who is in his eighties and he started volunteering for them 20 years ago. They’re like a little family.”

While it was Maria’s first foray into fundraising, she plans to continue the tradition, despite the hard graft.

“It was a lot of work, especially at that time of the year when I’m so busy. I worked six or seven weeks without a day off between work and the raffle. But it was so worth every single second,” she enthused.

“I will never stop until the day I can’t do it. Galway businesses were unbelievable with their donations. Once you had the prizes it all fell into place. People were so generous. Some people donated anonymously so it wasn’t even about the prizes. It was about the RNLI.”