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Grand Masters’ Festival

GRAND MASTER’S FESTIVAL.

In 1989 the first Grand Master’s Festival was held throughout the Irish Constitution, when £326,000 was raised by members of the Order in aid of the Freemasons of Ireland Medical Research Fund.
 
A second Festival was held some seven years later in 1996, when £500,000 was donated to assist sufferers of Alzheimer’s Disease in Ireland.
 
Our third Grand Master’s Festival, launched by the Grand Master, M.W.Bro. George Dunlop at the beginning of 2008, in aid of three charities each of which focuses on assisting in the health and well being of young children and teenagers, has now come to a successful conclusion.
 
There follows a reprint from The Belfast Telegraph:-
 
 

  Masonic Order campaign

 

 raises £600,000 for charity


Tuesday, 26 May 2009

A major fundraising campaign has beaten the credit crunch and raised £600,000 for different leading charities.

The Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, Samaritans and Laura Lynn Foundation will share the huge sum following the successful 18-month long Festival for Charity organised by the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland.

The finale of the festival was celebrated at a banquet in the Provincial Masonic Hall, Rosemary Street, Belfast, where Grand Master George Dunlop presented cheques for £200,000 to each of the charities.

Actress Olivia Nash, vice-president of the hospice, said it was one of the biggest single donations they had ever received. The stage and screen celebrity was among a guest list that also included her BBC TV Give My Head Peace co-star Alexandra Ford, who is ambassador for Belfast Samaritans, Jane McKenna, founder of the Laura Lynn Foundation, and other representatives of the charities.

“Like the rest of the community, charities are feeling the pinch of the credit crunch and our support is therefore more important and necessary than ever,” Mr Dunlop said.

The festival, launched in November 2007, was originally intended to cover a year-long programme but had to be extended by a further six months to accommodate the number of money-raising events organised by members of the Masonic Order throughout the island of Ireland.