Callum Lavery
TWO Northside sisters are venturing across the world to raise money for charity.
Clontarf twins Ellen and Sally Doyle are taking part in Jailbreak 2019, a student-run fundraiser with money raised being donated to Amnesty International and Saint Vincent de Paul.
The race, which begins on February 23, will see students from all over the country race across Europe in teams of two to a mystery location.
The sisters, along with the other competing teams will have 36 hours to escape from their starting point in Dublin and race towards ‘Location X’, which is revealed during the competition with the help of several clues.
However, participants are not allowed to spend their own money and must survive off the kindness of strangers and donations from sponsors.
UCD medical student Ellen, who is also involved with the UCD St Vincent De Paul society, said she is excited to raise money for the charity.
“We would love to contribute to the fundraising as much as we can but also try to survive for the 36 hours,” she said.
“We obviously know each other very well and feel like we can work to each other’s strengths and weaknesses to our advantage, as long as we don’t kill each other!
“I think we will do pretty well as we are both really motivated and determined, we have a good chance.”
Ellen’s twin and UCD Irish studies and linguistics student Sally is also excited to get started and grateful that using the Irish language is a task this year in the competition.
“I’m really excited,” said Sally. “I did Irish last year in college and one of the themes this year is to use as much Irish as you can which is really cool and I’ve never really had the opportunity to do something like this for charity.”
On the twins’ fundraiser page, they say that although they could not be more different from each other, they’re looking forward to the challenge ahead.
“For twins, we couldn’t be more different, but some things we have in common is our love of travel and our motivation to help others,” they said.
“We’re so excited to take part in this challenge and raise funds for two of the most important charities today.”
So far the twins have raised nearly €600 for the charities. Now entering its seventh year Jailbreak is Ireland’s largest student-run fundraiser. It is organised with several colleges across the country and has raised €285,000 since 2013.
This year’s event has over 130 teams taking part, all bidding to be crowned Jailbreak19 champion.
For more information and to donate to the girls’ campaign, visit www.jailbreakrace.com and search for Team 62: Ellen and Sally.
The first Jailbreak was set up in 2013 by a number of student socities at Trinity College Dublin. The competition was a major success with €11,000 raised for Amnesty International and Saint Vincent de Paul.