GAA clubs encouraged to register for Ireland Lights Up
700 GAA clubs have already signed up to support their communities
The GAA’s popular Ireland Lights Up walking initiative returns in January in partnership with RTE’s Operation Transformation and Get Ireland Walking.
Ireland Lights Up (ILU) encourages GAA clubs across the 32 counties to turn on their floodlights and open their walking tracks to enable their local communities to come together to walk and talk in a safe environment during the long dark evenings of winter.
As ever, Operation Transformation, which returns to television screens on January 5, will shine a light on this great initiative by showcasing GAA clubs that are participating in ILU each week on the show.
Due to public health restrictions, ILU 2021 was cancelled last January.
With a record 700 GAA clubs already signed up to support their communities, the GAA Healthy Clubs project partner Irish Life stepped up to help fill the void.
Through their lifestyle App, MyLife, the clubs instead recruited almost 28,000 participants to walk the walk in the Healthy Clubs Every Steps Counts Challenge. They recorded a combined step count of 7.5 billion over seven weeks. On average, each participant walked just over 200km.
To build on this success, another Healthy Clubs steps challenge will run concurrent to ILU 2022, with some great prizes for participating clubs on offer from Irish Life.
Participating clubs will be asked to open their gates on any or all evenings for the duration of the campaign from Wednesday January 12 to Wednesday March 2.
To register your club for Ireland Light Up and the MyLife Healthy Clubs Steps Challenge, go to www.getirelandwalking.ie/irelandlightsup