KINSALE Community School (KCS) had a double victory at the AIB Future Sparks School Impact Awards 2025 held in Croke Park.
KCS was honoured with the top title of Overall Best School as well as the winner of the Senior Small Group Environmental prize for the project ‘Renew IT: Bridging the Digital Divide.’
This prestigious national recognition celebrates the exceptional vision, compassion, and leadership shown by a remarkable group of Transition Year students at KCS: Matthew Coholan, Moki Sheehy, Anthony Byrne, Billy Dennehy, Cathal Murray, Eva Clarke, Julius Thalkofer, Lena Peters, Maria Louisa Vogt, and Philip Murphy.
Under the mentorship of Mr Aaron Bowen, their project tackled two pressing global challenges—electronic waste and educational inequality— by restoring old laptops and delivering them to schools in Tanzania.
Speaking about their wins, Aaron Bowen, teacher at Kinsale Community School, said: ‘It’s absolutely amazing, the kids worked so hard so it’s great to see it acknowledged by everybody. They are all so excited – I’m excited too!
The plan is to donate a portion of the prize money to Terretta Foundation Tanzania – we’ll put some of the money towards tools that we use to repair the laptops and expand the programme for next year.’
Commenting on winning the overall prize of €10,000, he said: ‘€10,000 is huge for the school and we will be reinvesting that back into future projects.’
