In Ireland: dare to dream it, and Dare to Believe it, too

“When we met Sarah Lavin, it was really, really cool to meet an Olympian that represents our country,” 12-year-old Amy, at the Holy Rosary Primary School in Wicklow, a town of about 10,000 people south of Dublin, would say of the experience. “She told us that she was a child just like us — doing sports and activities — and now she’s in the Olympics. And that is really cool.” 

And that is the entire point of the Dare to Believe programme, beneficiary of a Solidarity grant, what was a pilot programme now expanding into Year Three, the 2022-23 school year, with plans to keep growing not only across Ireland but well beyond with a win-win formula for kids, teachers and, critically, athletes.

Dare to Believe was dreamed up by good friends, both named Roisin – Roisin Jones and Roisin McGettigan.

Both went from Ireland to Providence, Rhode Island — to Providence College — to run for famed track and cross-country coach Ray Treacy. Jones stayed to get her MBA. McGettigan went on to compete at the 2008 Beijing Games, an Olympic finalist in the steeplechase. 

For years after, McGettigan said, she would be asked to talk to schoolkids. She says she was not very good. “I had to own that. I wasn’t prepared.” To fix that: “Can we have a programme? I got crickets.” Another pause. “This idea would not go away. Why we needed to do this — why role models are important.”

Enter Jones. “There’s the dreaming,” McGettigan said, “and then there’s the doing. I’m the dreamer and Ro,” meaning Jones, who by then had experience in the business world, “she’s the operator.”

The two approached the Olympic Council of Ireland, which showed interest but didn’t have funds. Reach out to Solidarity, came the word. Go, Solidarity said. 

Dare to Believe, McGettigan said, is “about teaching values and respect,” emphasising that the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, consistently believed Olympism should be in schools. 

But also: athletes are compensated for each visit. That stipend accounts for a significant portion of the programme cost. Is it worth it? Undeniably. Because while athletes consistently say they want to give back, it’s also the case that, as Jones said, “They [can] feel that they’re valued.”

The first year saw visits to 63 schools; in all, 6,000 kids. The second, a vastly expanded programme that had to work amid the pandemic, built around both the postponed Tokyo Games and the Beijing Winter Games: 46 visits but 624 schools, reaching 55,000 schoolchildren. The aim for 2022-23: 100 visits, 500 schools, about 40,000 young people. 

The 2022-23 programme won’t see the same numbers as the school year before because the year prior included challenges related to not just one but two Olympic Games. The 2023-24 school year, with the Paris Games looming? An “audacious” goal, McGettigan said: reaching every school in Ireland.

Jones, since February 2021 the Olympic Council of Ireland’s Dare to Believe programme director: “This programme exposes kids to a world they maybe didn’t know was there, a world of possibility. Sometimes these people,” like Sarah Lavin, “are superheroes. They’re unattainable.”

And then here they are. In person. “This makes these heroes reachable and attainable … when you see the impact with kids, and then the magic — it’s just amazing.”