A member of Tipperary's All Ireland winning senior hurling panel of 2010 is bracing himself for a major new life challenge.
Clonoulty Rossmore clubman and 2013 Intermediate All Ireland medal winner Timmy Hammersley has found himself in plenty challenging situations during his hurling career now he's getting set to head to the middle east to help some of the world's less well off.
Not only an accomplished hurler with the county, Timmy managed Mary Immaculate College Limerick to the 2013 Fitzgibbon cup final and holds the top scoring record for a single Fitzgibbon campaign in 2010.
Now the gold scholarship student in WIT who holds a Masters in Sport and Exercise Psychology, is volunteering his services to help the marginalised in Palestine and is looking for a dig out to help him get ready for the new chapter in his life.
'For the month of July I am going on a voluntary assignment to the town of Bethlehem within the West Bank territory of Palestine. This is being carried out in conjunction with the Palestinian Summer encounter. The Palestinian summer encounter is a joint venture between the Middle East Fellowship which is a USA based nonprofit NGO and The Holy Land Trust, a Palestinian nonprofit organization. This project facilitates opportunities for people to give up their time of a voluntary basis to marginalized Palestinian youth within the Palestinian occupied territories. Diverse groups of participants have consisted of people of all ages, religions and backgrounds. Participants are placed in a volunteer position at one of forty Palestinian nonprofits, schools, hospitals and organizations and are assigned to such tasks as: tutoring English, writing grant proposals, researching law and human rights, arranging activities for children and youth at summer camps, coaching sports, teaching music and dance and working with the physically or mentally disabled. My role will predominantly be arranging activities for children at summer camps and both the coaching of sports to kids and also developing the parent’s ability at both coaching and organizing sports their kids take part in.' says Timmy.
As part of his fundraising effort he is pulling in a few GAA brethren for a conference on the theme of “Building Vibrant Communities in Ireland, the Lessons from home and abroad”.
The impressive list of speakers includes Professor Eamon O Shea (Tipperary Senior Hurling manager), Tony Griffin, Clare Hurling Allstar and founder of the SOAR Foundation along with Alan Kerins the Galway Dual Player and founder of the Alan Kerins Projects.
To fund the trip Timmy's hoping for plenty support out of the conference developed in association with the Applied Social Sciences Department in LIT Tipperary.
'Through this conference we are hoping to create an awareness of key challenges for community development in Ireland and more widely in regions which suffer conflict and poverty. All of the speakers are experts on certain areas of community life and the hope is that individuals who attend will be inspired to go back and work at increasing the vibrancy of communities in which they live. We believe that Ireland and especially its rural parts needs to work hard at making its communities vibrant and at the same time cater for a broad a broad section of its populace. This has shown to have a double positive effect on both individuals and society as a whole. There is no entrance fee but donations would be greatly appreciated.' You know what to do.
