Neart na gCailíní

Aim

Girls quit sport fastest at 13–16. Ten weeks of expert yoga, pilates, speed and strength coaching to keep 80 Enniskillen girls playing.

Who are we?

We are Enniskillen Gaels GAA Club, one of the largest and fastest-growing clubs in Fermanagh. With hundreds of young boys and girls training every week, we are proud to be at the heart of our community, providing opportunities for children to learn, play, and enjoy Gaelic games in a safe and supportive environment. Our vision is simple: to give every child in Enniskillen the chance to develop their skills, make friends, and fall in love with sport.

We are also committed to supporting young adults, adults and older people through a range of sporting programmes which include recreational and competitive GAA activities. Our sports development plan proposes to create pathways for children to stay involved within Club activities until they are older. We also want to run new programmes and activities which bring in new members.

Why are we crowdfunding?

Girls quit sport fastest at 13–16.

It isn't only an Enniskillen problem. It happens in clubs across Ireland, and the research is blunt about it — girls drop out of sport far faster than boys, and the steepest fall comes between 13 and 16. But knowing that it's common doesn't make it acceptable. Those are our girls. And once they stop, most of them don't come back.

We've asked them why, and the answers are ones you'll recognise. Confidence. Feeling like they're not good enough. The sense that as you get older, sport narrows down to one question — are you on the team or aren't you? For a lot of girls the answer to that question is what ends it.

What we've never been able to offer them is the thing that actually helps: proper, expert coaching in movement, flexibility, speed and strength, taught to girls at their own age and stage, in a room where nobody is picked and nobody is dropped.

Neart na gCailíní — "strength of the girls" — is that programme. Ten weeks. Four age groups, from 11 right up to 18. Forty sessions of specialist coaching in yoga, pilates, speed and agility, and strength and conditioning, for 80 girls. 

And it doesn't stop in March. Part of what we raise puts four women from our own club through coaching qualifications, so that when the ten weeks are up, the programme has coaches of its own and keeps running.

Neart na gCailíní directly serves three of Sport NI's priority groups — women and girls, young people aged 11 to 18, and people living in a rural area. It is new and additional in every respect: three of the four disciplines have never been offered to girls at this club, it engages specialist coaches we have not previously worked with, it runs on its own timetable in community venues, and it is in no sense our normal day-to-day activity. Every session is separately registered, timetabled and invoiced against this project, and no session or cost is claimed against any other funder. The coach development element is what gives it a life beyond the funded block.

How we’ll spend the money raised

We're raising £7,000. Sport NI's Creating Opportunities fund will match 65% of that — so every pound you pledge is more than doubled. Here's exactly where it goes.

• Yoga coaching, 10 sessions — £550
• Pilates coaching, 10 sessions — £550
• Strength and conditioning coaching, 10 sessions — £1000
• Hall hire, 40 sessions — £1,500
• Equipment: mats, blocks, resistance bands, speed ladders, hurdles, light weights — £1,500
• Coaching qualifications for four women from the club — £1000
• Launch taster day and end-of-programme celebration — £900

The equipment stays with the club and gets used long after March. So do the coaches.

Community impact

This reaches further than 80 girls, and further than one club.

It reaches families. A girl who stays in sport at 14 is a girl who is out of the house, off her phone, with her friends, moving. Parents in Enniskillen know exactly what that's worth, and they know what the alternative looks like.

It reaches beyond our own members. Neart na gCailíní is open to girls in the town who don't play for us and never will. You don't have to be a Gael to come. For some girls the appeal is precisely that it isn't a team — there are no trials, no panel, no sitting on a bench.

It leaves four qualified coaches behind. Four women from Enniskillen, trained and certified, who can deliver this work for our club and for others. Fermanagh has too few female coaches. This is four more, permanently.

It feeds into everything else we're building. Our new community health and wellbeing hub opens in 2027. When it does, we want it opening into a girls' programme that is already running, with coaches already trained and girls already through the door — not a room waiting for someone to think of a use for it.

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

Funding method

All or nothing – this project will only receive pledges if it reaches its target of £7,000 by 20th November 2026 at 9:25am