A group of Irish GAA stars and musicians will travel to Africa this weekend as part of a Warriors for Humanity campaign in aid of Self Help Africa.
On the agenda, the first All-Star game played in Africa as well as the first combined male and female GAA game with hurling, camogie and football set to go on show. Kenya is the destination with all players heading on the trip having committed to raising €10,000 to help with costs and aid, including the planting of 1,000,000 trees.
Among them, Kilkenny camogie and hurling All-Star winners Grace Walsh (Tullaroan) and Paul Murphy (Danesfort).
“Personally I always wanted to do some sort of charity work. I probably thought it was going to be down the lines of my own career in nursing but when I got the call to ask to be part of this trip, it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down”, Walsh told Full Time on Monday.
“I’m really looking forward to hopefully making a change to many lives of people that are probably a lot less fortunate than us and also helping our planet at the same time.”
“There are going to be two games – a hurling and camogie match and a football match, so we’ll have a bit of a mix.I know there’s a plan to do a session with Brother Colin (who trains the Kenyan athletes) in the early hours of the morning at high altitude, so that should be exciting as well. It will be a historic event, the first ever GAA or camogie game in Kenya, something definitely to look forward to.”
“Playing camogie in Kilkenny has given me this opportunity and it’s incredible. I think sometimes we forget the privileged position that a lot of us are in. We take for granted some times we have a bed to sleep in at night, food on the table, water that we can drink. They’re things that we take for granted and those things that are probably very small to us are luxuries to a lot of people around the world. It’s great to be able to raise this money, to go on the trip, to plant the trees, and to improve the lives of people that are not fortunate enough to do that themselves.”
The Plant The Planet Games initiative has raised over €285,000 to date. You can find out more here.
Listen: Grace Walsh on Full Time
Forward to the 34 minute mark for the full interview on this week’s Full Time.
