Below is a selection of the feedback we have received about www.clarefocus.ie and the weekly e-newsletter. If you would like to add to these testimonials, please submit your comments here. I scan the events when the Clare Focus e-newsletter comes into my inbox. We often see events that sound really interesting. We don't have a car, so often we choose things in Ennis, (Glor events is one we enjoy and Ennis' many musical activities). At the moment I am really considering the Burren Winterage Cattle Drove and Outdoor Concert. We might have to rent a car, put on our wellies and go! Also, a few days ago we extended our 6 month to another 6 months (end of March). So now will be keeping a definite watch for things to keep us sane through the long winter months! We lived in West Cork for 6 years, went to Greece for 11 years and are now back in Ireland. We are American born, but are also Irish Citizens. So our trip here was to see if we wanted to make Ireland our home.
I would like to congratulate you on your wonderful site. I am originally from Ennis and have a holiday home near Doonbeg and I always send new clients coming to rent the house the link to the Clare Focus newsletter. Ann Liston, Newcastle West My grandmother is from County Clare. We love to visit, and the information provided by Clare Focus is excellent and much appreciated as well!
We recently opened a restaurant at Kilshanny House and chose Clare Focus as our advertising medium. We held an evening of food and theatre and a huge amount of our customers that live in North Clare came to the evening because they saw it on the Clare Focus e-newsletter. We plan on continuing the supper theatre and other events on Friday evenings and we will definitely choose Clare Focus to advertise any upcoming events. The cost of advertising on Clare Focus was within our budget, very effective and we were able to talk with real people. Mary & Aidan, Kilshanny House, Kilshanny Village Over the last number of years Clare Active Citizenship has used Clare Focus as a means of ensuring news of our events, training and other Active Citizenship events have a county-wide coverage. Clare Focus gives community activities their own section and that makes it easy for people to find what they are interested in. It has worked very well for us.
Ann Loftus, Clare Active Citizenship
I find it useful and informative to receive the bulletin on a weekly basis. Clare Haven Services Ltd Clare Focus is an innovative community website for the people of Co. Clare where we can find out what's happening all around the county. I go to Clare Focus first to look for information on any event that is on in the County. I also use it for finding business listings. It’s great for education purposes and finding new courses and hobbies. The layout is excellent and easy to use.
Margaret Hennessy I use Clare Focus all the time. It's a great weekly entertainment guide, which I find very useful. Teresa Conlon Clare Focus has always been a great site to check events and local happenings in Co. Clare. Its always got current information and is a very user friendly website. WowWee.ie use this website to advertise each year. We get a lot of traffic through each week from the Clare Focus Website. Each Thursday morning when I wake bright and early there is always a Clare Focus Email on my phone updating me with whats going on. Well done to Madeline and the Team
Aine Gleeson, WowWee Clare Focus is a great web-site, on a walk - talk recently on the Burren I met a family of tourists having like myself got information from the events-activities guide on Clare Focus. They subsequently booked their place on the trip before they travelled. Congrats it's a great community-tourist service. Pauline Chadwick I’m a regular visitor to County Clare as my grandchildren live in Ennis. I find your internet magazine of great benefit when planning my trips. I particularly like your children’s activity section and I have found some really interesting activities to bring them to during my visits. The ‘What’s on Today’ section is excellent for up to date information too. Keep up the good work.
Iris Savage, Co Down I receive the Clarefocus Newsletters and always find something of interest - be it an upcoming charity event, evening classes, kids events... Clarefocus is a mine of very useful and interesting information and helps me keep in touch with what's happening around Clare! Keep up the good work, and keep the newsletters coming Team Clarefocus! Pamela Clancy, Ennis Since I discovered Clare Focus 4 years ago I have used it a lot. The weekly updates are excellent, so much so that at times I have to limit my access as otherwise I would spend my time galavanting around Clare going to talks, walks and concerts and never do any work. Clare Focus is the Wikipedia of 'What's on in the Banner County'. As a organising member of local environmental groups Ennis Transition Towns and Clare Fracking Concern, C.F. is an invaluable tool for spreading the message free of charge. Many people have come to our events saying they got wind of them on the site. When visiting other counties I have looked for a similar service but have found no equivalent, no site that is as comprehensive as C.F. Maybe it's time to start 'franchising' it. Keep up the great work Madeline, your site is a wee gem.
Susan Griffin
Three American student teachers volunteered with the Garden of Eden Projects last spring and we planted a new community orchard in Ennis. I hadn't done much advertising, so I asked them how they had heard of the Garden of Eden Projects Initiative. "We read about on the Clare Focus website". What an excellent service! Féidhlim Harty, Garden of Eden Projects Initiative and FH Wetland Systems Ltd Hi to Madeline and Des. I decided I needed new activities in September and was delighted to find so much variety and information on one site. The information was up to date and therefore no excuses about joining a new activity!!!
Christina Doohan, Accountant
Ennis Leisure Complex have used Clare Focus for a number of years now and have always found them to be most professional, friendly and efficient. We get a lot of feedback from our advertisements on the site. The submit events section of the website is an especially good idea for local businesses to promote their goods, services and events. Abaigeal Healy, Ennis Leisure Complex Ennis Guitar School uses Clare Focus to inform people of all that is happening in the school year round. We post all our new courses and term dates with information about what students will be able to learn while attending different courses on at EGS. Clare Focus is easy to use and a great way of finding out about different events that are happening around Clare.
Ennis Guitar School
I started up a window cleaning - handyman business last year and I found that a lot of my business came from the Clare Focus website. I put adds in various other places but nothing compared to the amount of work I received from Clare Focus. I would highly recommend the site to anyone setting up a new business and Madeline has been so helpfull in putting me in touch with clients. Thank you. Mick McDonald Clare Focus is a wonderful website for local people. I find it most useful to find out in advance what is going on in the locality, exactly where and when. It covers such a wide selection of events and activities and is mot informative. I have found the Staff most helpful with their advice re notices.
Jean Dunne, Quin Madeline and the Clare Focus team are true professionals. From my first phone call they instilled me with such confidence I knew advertising TurnTrim with them would be a very worthwhile experience. The set up was quick and easy and Madeline responded to all my enquiries promptly. What more can I say other than keep up the good work guys! Elaine Egan, TurnTrim I find the Clare Focus Site most helpful. Each week I look forward to getting your email, searching the pages and selecting things to do and places to go. One suggestion, could you allocate space to activities for the over 55s, 65s, & 75s. A lot of people in these age groups are crying out for pastimes, things to do, places to go and visit. This could be BIG.
Seamus Mulqueen Clarefocus is superb. If it didn't exist it would have to be invented! I have taken part in many activities, been to events and met many people through Clarefocus that I wouldn't otherwise have even been aware of. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. Brian Eccles, Chartered Engineer I use Clare Focus on a regular basis and I find it a fantastic resource, both as an information provider and an information distributor. It's my first port-of-call for events in Clare. Congratulations to the team behind it - long may Clare Focus continue!
Frances O'Gorman, Clare County Library Have found The Clare Focus team polite, flexible, professional and expert at providing content for children's activities in County Clare. I think this is a very impressive site and the closer you look at it, there is a lot of very valuable and useful information. Well done to you all and best of luck. John Lucey, Owner and Principal, Stagecoach Theatre Arts, Clare I work with a voluntary group in the community and part of that work is to encourage active participation in the community. The Clare Focus newsletter provides a wonderful snapshot of free and affordable activities and events for people to access in the community. So much rich and wonderful stuff is happening in our community and the people who need to hear about it end up frequently not hearing about it. That has changed, I can now go to work armed with a list of interesting things that people can choose from, its great! Community involvment begins with getting the information out there. Thank you Clare Focus!
Julie Brosnan, Secretary New Horizons Social Club We have used the website over the last year to highlight Events, Classes and general Information and have found it to be a very effective way to attract customers. It is concise, well produced and a real beacon of professionalism in the Clare Region. I would recommend the service to everyone in particular the regular email service to those who subscribe. I wish Clarefocus a successful 2010 Steve Kinch, Ennistymon Community Centre Thanks for the promotion last week - again you delivered more than expected. I am using Clare Focus to promote my new web-site www.fitnesssolutions.ie with our members - more and more people are telling me that they heard about us on Clare Focus. Thank-you.
Cinemobile is a non-profit making company and a registered charity. Our remit is to bring cinema to communities that are without that service. The Clarefocus website is an invaluable resource to us, but covers so much besides, for towns and communities throughout Co. Clare. We are hugely appreciative of the service the website offers. Noreen Collins, Manager, Cinemobile, Galway Clare Focus is a great facility, not just for the people of Clare, but for Clare Folk everywhere. It is a brilliant service for keeping in touch with all that is happening in the Banner.
Clarefocus from the very beginning has been all about community and it shows. Every week the newsletter drops into my inbox and it always has something of interest that I would have missed otherwise. If it's on in Clare then it's in Clarefocus, whether it's a small community event for charity, a children's event or a gig at the local, it'll be there. It also has a great mix of business and community listings for the county, something I personally couldn't be without. And the fact that you can upload details of a community event free of charge is amazing! Well done to the team.
I live in the US outside of Memphis, TN but I LOVE Clare and have visited many times! I recently found the Clare Focus website and I must tell you how much I enjoy it. It is so well done! It's a real connection for me and I don't feel quite so far away. It is a wonderful service for anyone who wants or needs to know what is happening. I particularly like to find out about music festivals and events which will help me plan the next visit more easily. Thank you again for creating such a fine site! It is obvious from the format, layout, and content that Madeline has drawn on her experience of working with communities and in the voluntary sector to deliver a consumer friendly, informative web-site. The site is a showcase of what Clare has to offer to both tourists and locals. Such painstaking attention to detail demonstrates a love of and a commitment to her adopted county. Everyone in Co. Clare will now benefit from the local and national support shown to the social entrepreneurship in Co. Clare, which has resulted in the development of Clare Focus. Clare focus is giving the people of Clare the opportunity to be in touch with what’s happening in their County and to showcase the county to the world. This is exactly what SEI aims to foster in communities - projects which are good ideas, entrepreneurial and which will improve people’s experiences and the social capital in society - so we were delighted to support Madeline in her venture and congratulate her on her success. Sean Coughlan, managing director of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland The development of a web based promotional initiative covering all facets of life in the community is a very welcome addition to the county at large, and in particular to the further development and promotion of the Arts to a wider audience at local level. The website will allow local communities to promote themselves and their events further and raise the profile of the myriad Arts events happening at any one time in the county I am originally from County Clare and I have just come back to the County to set my homeopathy practice in Ennistymon. I think that Clare Focus is a fantastic resource for small businesses in the County, but it also shows what a great place Co. Clare is to work and live in, and of course to visit. Clare Sheehan, homeopath, Ennistymon. This web-site not only looks good, it covers community events; community job vacancies; volunteer and funding opportunities; farmer’s markets. The web-site also has a social entertainment side which will attract the general public and they will become more aware of the work done in the community sector. During the testing phase I found the web-site easy to use - the information you need can be found quickly and easily and the same applied to uploading our information to Clare Focus. We have just had our own web-site designed and we now have a direct link from the Clare Focus site – which is a great advantage and resource for a local community childcare centre. The Clare Community Forum’s (CCF) slogan is that – ‘we are the voice of the community and voluntary sector in Clare’ and as such the CCF is delighted to support Clare Focus, as it adds great impetus to that voice and gives people working in the community and voluntary sector another way of accessing and disseminating information. Richard Cahill Chairperson of the Clare Community Forum.
The introduction of a local, information website and e-newsletter, is a great new resource for the county. The Citizen’s information Service recognises that information is the key to decision making, empowerment and full participation in society for people – so giving people access to this range of up-to-date, local community and social information is very worthwhile.
The website and weekly e-newsletter are fantastic – the problem of accessing timely, regularly updated information on events in the community and voluntary sector has been an unnecessary barrier for people with disabilities – Clare Focus will help ensure that this is no longer the case. Josephine Keaveney, manager of the Disabled People of Clare (DPOC) Clare Focus is a great idea! It’s a really well designed web site that gives you a quick way to find out what is going on in Co. Clare; everything from shows and book clubs to community meetings on the most important issues facing people around the County. It is a very valuable new source of information for the county, congratulations on getting it up and running.
I moved to Dublin some years ago and when I was planning trips back to Clare, it was difficult to find out what was happening - until Clare Focus. Now, with a click of a button I can see at a glance what’s on, from cultural events to community activities, and I have signed up for the weekly e-newsletter so I can plan my visit before I arrive. When I am in Clare, there’s a feature on the site that allows me to check out ‘what’s on to-day’. What a brilliant timesaving idea! Why have we waited so long for such an innovative project? I think it will become an essential part of the lives of Clare people and visitors to their vibrant county. This facility should be available at every tourist location - it means that I will be coming back to Clare more often. Thank you to Madeline Mc Aleer and the agencies that have supported her in this unique venture. Well Done County Clare!
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