Down Right Brilliant Marks a Decade of Joy as 67 Families Celebrate at Ballyholland Camp
The Down Right Brilliant summer camp in Ballyholland, County Down, has reached its tenth anniversary in style, welcoming a record 67 families from south Down and South Armagh to a week of sport, laughter, and community spirit that volunteers describe as the highlight of their year. The charity, which supports children and young people with Down syndrome, has grown from a modest local initiative into one of the most celebrated inclusive programmes in Northern Ireland.
Background
Down Right Brilliant was founded a decade ago by a small group of parents and community volunteers in the Newry area who recognised a significant gap in summer provision for young people with Down syndrome. At the time, families in south Down and South Armagh had few structured options for their children during the school holidays, and the social isolation that could result was a source of real anxiety for parents navigating an already demanding set of responsibilities.
The camp was built on a simple but powerful premise: that children with Down syndrome deserve the same opportunities for fun, friendship, and independence as any other young person. From its earliest days, the programme attracted enthusiastic volunteers — many of them students pursuing careers in medicine, education, and social care — who found that the experience shaped their professional outlook as profoundly as any classroom or clinical placement.
Over the past ten years, the charity has expanded its reach considerably. What began as a single week of activities for a handful of families has evolved into a structured two-week programme, with one week dedicated to primary school-aged children and a second tailored to post-primary students. The Ballyholland Community Centre has become a second home for participants, its halls and grounds transformed each August into a space of extraordinary energy and warmth.
Key Developments
This year's camp welcomed 67 families — the largest cohort in the charity's history — and featured an expanded programme of activities including basketball, soccer, hockey, field games, bouncy castles, petting farms, singing, dancing, and arts and crafts. A particular highlight was a visit from a local fire engine, which drew gasps of delight from participants across both age groups.
Youth club leader Emer Reilly, who has been involved with the camp since its early years, described the atmosphere as unlike anything else she encounters in her professional life. "If you're in the worst mood in the world, after ten minutes with the children it's gone," she said. "The energy they bring, the joy they have — it's completely infectious. You leave every day feeling like you've done something that genuinely matters."
The camp relies on a blend of public funding, local business sponsorship, and charitable grants. In late 2024, the charity received £15,000 from the AIB Community €1 Million Fund, specifically earmarked to support the delivery of the inclusive summer programme and provide respite for families during the school holidays. That funding has helped the organisation maintain its commitment to keeping participation costs as low as possible for families.
Volunteers this year included a cohort of young people from the local area, many of them in their late teens and early twenties, who gave up significant portions of their summer to support the programme. Several described the experience as formative, noting that working alongside participants had given them a perspective on disability, inclusion, and community that no formal training could replicate.
Why It Matters
The Down Right Brilliant camp addresses a need that remains stubbornly underserved across Northern Ireland. For families of children with Down syndrome, the summer holidays can be a period of significant stress: school-based support structures disappear, respite options are limited, and the social opportunities that neurotypical children take for granted — the casual friendships, the spontaneous activities, the sense of belonging to a peer group — can feel frustratingly out of reach.
What Down Right Brilliant provides is not simply a week of activities. It provides a community. For many participants, the camp is the one setting in their year where they are surrounded entirely by peers who share their experience, where the social dynamics are shaped around their needs rather than around accommodating them within a mainstream framework. That distinction matters enormously, both for the young people themselves and for their parents, who describe the respite the camp provides as genuinely life-sustaining.
The charity's model — volunteer-led, community-rooted, and deliberately low-cost — also offers a template for how inclusive provision can be delivered without the bureaucratic overhead that often makes statutory services slow to respond. In a region where health and social care waiting lists remain among the longest in the United Kingdom, the voluntary sector's capacity to fill gaps quickly and compassionately is not a luxury but a necessity.
The tenth anniversary milestone is also a moment to reflect on how attitudes toward Down syndrome have shifted over the past decade. Awareness has grown, advocacy has become more sophisticated, and the expectation that people with Down syndrome should be included in mainstream community life — rather than accommodated at its margins — has strengthened considerably. Down Right Brilliant has been part of that cultural shift in south Down and South Armagh, demonstrating through practice what inclusion actually looks like.
Local Impact
The camp's reach extends well beyond the 67 families who attended this year. In a community like Ballyholland and the surrounding areas of south Down and South Armagh, a charity of this kind generates ripples that touch schools, parishes, sports clubs, and workplaces. Volunteers return to their communities with a changed perspective; parents who might otherwise feel isolated find solidarity and practical support; and the young people who attend the camp carry the confidence and friendships they build there into the rest of their year.
For the Newry area specifically, Down Right Brilliant has become a point of civic pride. The charity's ability to attract funding, volunteers, and community support year after year reflects the strength of the social fabric in this part of County Down — a fabric that has been tested by many pressures over the decades but has consistently demonstrated its resilience.
What's Next
The charity is now planning its post-anniversary fundraising drive, with organisers hoping to secure additional funding to expand the programme further in 2027. Discussions are under way about extending the camp's reach to families in neighbouring areas who currently have no access to comparable provision. The AIB Community Fund grant runs until the end of 2026, and the charity is actively seeking replacement funding to ensure continuity beyond that point. Supporters can contact the organisation through its social media channels or through Newry, Mourne and Down District Council's community development team.
