Rape Crisis Mid-West service falls back on Limerick students' viral idea

A GROUP of UL students have joined forces with Rape Crisis Mid-West to devise a plan to help the organisation with its ongoing need for fundraising to keep the service running.

MBA students at the Kemmy Business School, Katie Clair, Stephen Ruschitzko and Owen Bagnell had 24 hours to come up with a solution to the organisation’s everyday challenge.

Their solution was a proposed viral video initiative, called the “Fallback challenge”, which consists of two people taking part in and recording a trust fall.

As part of the challenge, the three students suggested that people should create their own Fallback video and nominate two people to do the challenge; share the video on social media using the hashtag #Fallback; and text “Fallback” to 50300 to donate €4, €3.60 of which will be donated to Rape Crisis Mid-West).

“Rather than being content with making recommendations about what Rape Crisis Midwest could do, they are running with their idea #FallBack, getting the support they need and making it happen. This is an exciting and innovative campaign which has the capacity to go viral and the Kemmy Business School is thrilled to support it in every way we can,” she said.

Rape Crisis Mid-West’s executive director Miriam Duffy said: “We are delighted to welcome this initiative which blends the corporate and charitable sector together. We are very excited about this campaign, which has been the brainchild of a group of students from the MBA programme.”

The challenge was officially launched last Wednesday by UL Students’ Union and the Kemmy Business School at UL. The students say that they are “confident” that they will get the support the SU and the large student population.