Ballyronan Boat Club organise Easter Camp on the shores of Lough Neagh

Ballyronan Boat Club is organising an Easter Camp where schoolchildren from P1 to P7 will be able to participate to learn more about Lough Neagh.

“We are trying to encourage them to get active on the water, have fun together and come to love the lough,” said Elwyn Agnew, member of the Ballyronan Boat Club.

“Although sailing is our primary focus, the list of activities we have planned so far are beach volleyball, water basketball, walk the plank, frisbee golf, race to sink the boat, build a raft, make a human knot, capsize relay race, blindfold paddle race, capture the flag.

Elwyn said that the Ballyronan Boat Club is trying to bring Protestants, Catholics and young people from other backgrounds together to have some fun together in the water.

“There will be team-building games, quizzes and prizes. They will have a chance to take out paddle boards, canoes, kayaks and sailing boats.

“And then there will also be a little bit of a talk each day and then some activities. We will teach them how to go into canoes or paddle boards.

“There will also be some sort of team building games every day, just to encourage the kids to mix so they don't stay with the same friends from primary school to learn to mix with different schools,” said Elwyn.

This initiative comes from a desire to make the kids understand plastic pollution so outcomes might go differently during their lifetimes.

“As a part of that, we're going to show them a wee bit about sailing and canoeing and a little bit of education about the plastic problem.

“The kids are the future. We have to get them to understand the problem when they're very young so they don't repeat our mistakes.”

Elwyn hopes for the kids to understand the value of the environment around them and leave the Easter Camp with good notions.

“We're just trying to get young people out and active on the water and a little bit of an appreciation of the nature around them at the same time. It's something we do all the time.

“We just started to realise how important it actually is. Because what we do is actually having an effect on generations of people in the future. So we want to make sure we can reach as many people as possible.”

To organise the Easter Camp, the Ballyronan Boat Club contacted Primary schools and Mid-Ulster Council to get as many people as possible to participate in the event.

Over the years, the Ballyronan Boat Club has noticed the plastic and litter problem in the river.

In the last weeks, they installed a debris boom in the Ballinderry River to be able to pick up floating litter every month.

“We are in the water all the time and we are very aware of the problem,” said Elwyn.

“We see the problem. We have a responsibility along with everybody else to stop it."

This Easter Camp is part of their initiative to sensibilise children to nature around them and the problems surrounding Lough Neagh.

The Easter Camp will run from Wednesday, April 3 to Friday, April 5.

Funded primarily by the Ballyronan Boat Club, the event received support from the Royal Yachting Association (RYA).