Bressie rows into Offaly as part of youth mental health fundraiser

NIALL “Bressie” Breslin, musician, podcaster and mental health advocate, is rowing the Shannon to complete an ambitious fundraiser for the youth mental health charity he co-founded, A Lust for Life.

Starting last Friday June 30th, Bressie and some good friends will be kayaking the length of the River Shannon – a whopping journey of over 300km. Dubbed "The Rising '', the challenge started at Dowra on the shores of Lough Allen and it will end at the mouth of the Shannon in Limerick city on this Thursday July 6th, at King John's Castle . “The Rising '' is a concept Breslin developed together with fellow Mullingar local Ray Carolan, from Lakeland Kayaks.

Breslin is making special guest stops along the route, and overnighted in Offaly after arriving in Shannon Harbour on Monday night. On the nightly stopovers he'll be hosting fundraising events with local musicians and mental health advocates.

The funds raised by "The Rising" will contribute to A Lust for Life's schools mental health programmes. The uptake from the teachers is incredible. Over 1000 schools (1 in 3 primary schools nationwide) have already registered nationwide making the programme available to over 57,000 Irish primary school children.

Their programmes are free of change and their aim is to make the programme available to every child in primary school by the end of 2024. The programme is already available to 1st to 6th class children and now they need your help to develop the junior and senior infants programme.

The funds will also contribute to the development of a new A Lust for Life secondary schools programme starting initially with Transition Year students, which will replicate the scalable and easy to use model of the primary school programme as a digital, modular, teacher led programme. People who donate will have a direct impact on children’s lives as each euro will give another child access to the latest generation in tools for emotional literacy and psychoeducation to improve their wellbeing and resilience as they grow through primary and into secondary school.

None of this would be possible without the support of their main sponsor SignFit – visit http://signfitbranding.ie to discover more of their great work!