Meath students win award for charity initiative in Dunboyne

Two transition year students, who provide special hats for children who lose their hair due to chemotherapy, have won an inaugral Garda Youth award.

Sean Norman, 16, and Aoife Byrne, 17, students at St Peter’s College in Dunboyne, Co Meath, are behind “Lids for Kids”. The hats are made from non-allergenic wool and come in bright colours and different sizes and can be made to resemble popular children’s characters such as SpongeBob, Peppa Pig, and the Minions.

Such is the popularity of the initiative that hats are being donated from as far away as Bermuda to help Irish children fighting cancer.

Sean lost his sister Aoibheann, 8, to a rare form of cancer in 2010 and said she had inspired him and Aoife to make the hats.

He said there were no Lids for Kids when Aoibheann needed one, “it was either a bandana or a hat and the bandanas were only little and wouldn’t keep you warm”. Winning the award “is great especially as we were one of the first to win. We were surrounded by very great people”, said Sean.

Aoife said: “After we finished transition year we were still getting a massive response to Lids for Kids so we just kept it going.”

They now have people crocheting the hats for them all over Ireland as well as offers of donations of handmade hats from the UK and even the other side of the Atlantic.

“There are hats coming to us from Bermuda, and Florida. In all, we have over 50 volunteers making them for us,” she added.

To date the initiative has seen over 300 hats donated to Aoibheann’s Pink Tie, a charity set up in memory of Sean’s sister, and it distributes them to children undergoing treatment at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin.

The pair were nominated for one of the inaugural Garda Youth Awards in Co Meath by both Blood Bike Leinster and by Meath Cllr Maria Murphy.