Harold's Cross Youth Club

Harolds Cross Youth Club was formed almost 60 years ago to cater for the children in Harolds Cross and surrounding areas and is still going strong today.

The club meets at the community centre in Rosary couple of times to play games, do arts and crafts or just hang out .

There are several outings during the year: Cinema trips, Christmas Panto and lots of other places. We organise Christmas and Halloween parties every year and any other excuse to eat pizza!

The Summer project is a 2 weeks annual project. There have been outings to Fort Lucan, horse riding, bowling, quasar and lots more.

“It's great experience and lots of fun!”

Freda BradyYouth Club Coordinator
  • All Youth Club Leaders are Garda Vetted
  • All Youth Club Leaders have completed Child Protection Courses with CrossCare.

With over 50 members and a waiting list the Youth Club is thriving again.

Rita King is managing the upstairs of the premises and hiring it for Clubs as diverse as the Irish Dancing Classes to Ladies Clubs to Pole Dancing to Classic Art Classes, to name a few, with lots more to come in the future.

We hope to make the Paddy Brennan World Cup the biggest and best ever and will be having a celebration night later in the year.
So there you have it 63 years gone in a flash and more on the way.
It would not have been possible without the efforts of volunteers down through the years, beginning from the early days of the Stew House.

The Youth Club realised from early on how important holiday and trips where to the children, some of who maybe had never been outside of Dublin. There were Easter trips to Cork, Summer Holidays to Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan and many weekends to Wicklow and Wexford.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s the Club set up a Junior Leadership
Course for up and coming Leaders. This carried on for many years right up to the late 90’s but with the Old Club House in need of repair the Youth Club membership waned. Throughout this time the Football remained strong and steadfast never missing matches, training etc.

Today we are back to the vibrant Club of those glory days. We meet twice a week and have around 50 young members. We have great activities for the members, Pool, table tennis, darts, fuzz ball, arts and crafts, the list goes on and on, it’s no wonder that there is awaiting list!

We have achieved so much in the last five years. The children painted the Club House interior walls with large murals of their choice and what a great job they did.

Twelve of our teenage members successfully completed their Junior Leadership course last year.

We have also run a very successful Summer Camp for the last five years.
The Summer Camp lasts for 2 weeks each summer and is  packed with adventures, zip wire, climbing, canoeing, bowling, archery, etc.

The children took part in the CDYSB 1916 Programme. This was an Audio visual event and took place in Liberty Hall in December 2016, for this programme the children took part in and created 2 short films, a model of Dublin City in 1916 and a photographic display of Harold’s Cross children from 1916 until 2016. The short films were also shown in the IFC where the children got a chance to see their work on the big screen. The project also gave the children an insight into 1916 and we had
talks in the Club from one of James Plunkett’s relatives and we brought the children through Dublin to show them where the rising actually took place. Below is the Model of Dublin 1916 and some stills from the photo display and the films are available to be seen on request.

We have lots of programmes planed for the near future, there is a photography course, we have a Tea Supper planned to treat the Lady’s Club because we are always mindful that the Youth engage with the older generation of the community.

We know how important the past is and all the people who went before us and that we do stand of the shoulders of Giants, but we do keep the torch burning and we are making great memories for our young people, and we never ever sit on our laurels.

Freda Kenny Brady