Kilkenny school wins top prize at the AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards
Scoil Aireagail in Ballyhale is celebrating community contribution and excellence in education
Scoil Aireagail in Ballyhale has been announced as the winner of the Mixed/ Large Group Financial Prize at the 2025 AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards, winning €2,000 for the school.
The project was called Empowering Future Generations: A Student-Led Financial Literacy Book and Community Initiative and aimed to empower students, educate the wider community, and ensure financial literacy reaches multiple generations.
The AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards, celebrate schools making a positive impact on their community, centred on three key pillars of activity: Environmental, Social, and Financial.
These pillars encompass a wide range of activities that contribute to the betterment of communities, including volunteering, fundraising, awareness campaigns, mentoring, peer education, skills-sharing, and environmental conservation.
The 2025 AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards ceremony took place in Dublin’s Croke Park on April 29, having received a staggering 124 submissions from schools across the country.
The event was hosted by digital creator, presenter, and teacher John Sharpson, and participating schools across Ireland were celebrated for their amazing work contributing to the betterment of their communities.
Speaking about their win, Rita Dooley, teacher at Scoil Aireagail, said: “We are absolutely delighted, gobsmacked! It’s been an amazing event and journey, full of learnings for our students. “It’s a fantastic achievement for our school and the wider community as well. We desperately need digital technology in our school so the prize money will be earmarked to buy some much needed laptops.”
As part of AIB’s commitment to sustainable communities, the AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards provide a platform to showcase and reward the endeavours schools are undertaking to inspire and ignite positive change, such as fundraising, volunteering, activism, mentoring, and more.
“I want to congratulate all the winners of today’s AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards,” said Orlaith Ryan, Chief Customer Officer at AIB.
“We are delighted to celebrate the outstanding contributions made by schools and young people across Ireland through the AIB Future Sparks School Impact programme.
“These awards not only offer students a chance to engage in a new form of learning outside of the regular syllabus, but also inspire students to continue to make a positive impact on their local communities.”