Dear Friend of Cavan,
It has been one month since we celebrated the first-ever Cavan Day together, and now that the dust has settled, I want to thank everyone for helping to make it such a spectacular success.
2020 has been a trying time for many, and for people from Cavan, those with Cavan ancestry, and those with an affinity for the county, Cavan Day represented a source of great comfort – a communal expression of pride and love for this great county that transcended all borders and boundaries.
A great deal of planning went into the Cavan Day initiative, from our own team here in Cavan County Council, to the hugely talented local filmmakers Alan Bradley and Padraig Conaty, and host Louise O’Reilly McGuinness, who produced the fantastic ‘Cavan Day Live’ broadcast. However, our efforts would count for little if the global Cavan family did not take the event to their hearts, and they did that with great enthusiasm and passion, propelling Cavan onto a global stage on 26th September.
Whether you provided content for the programme, shared a video message, posted a photo, liked or shared others’ posts, or tuned into Cavan Day Live, you helped us turn the Internet into a sea of positivity, creating a wave of enthusiasm for Cavan and its people, the effects of which will be felt far beyond September 26th.
By 10am on Saturday, the #CavanDay hashtag was the already number one trending topic in Ireland, only dropping out of the top ten trending topics by 3pm the following day.
In total, the #CavanDay hashtag garnered over 10 million impressions, with the number of unique users to have seen posts containing #CavanDay, numbering over 3,500,000 people, a truly staggering figure.
Posts from New York, Philadelphia, London, Dublin, and County Cavan itself, of course, abounded. But #CavanDay was also celebrated in locales as diverse as Morocco, China, Russia, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, France, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, and Guam. Cavan Day t-shirts, ordered direct from a family-owned business on Church Street in Cavan Town, were proudly worn in photos and videos posted from North Carolina and New Jersey.
Together we have managed to raise the profile of our county, and helped bring members of the global Cavan family closer together. It is my fervent hope and firm belief that we can now continue to build on this positivity, and further develop links and friendships between County Cavan and the many thousands of people around the world who hold the Breffni County dear in their hearts.
You can keep abreast of ongoing Diaspora activities by following @cavancalling on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and by tuning into our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzwLrgm48JKT3l4oAhXY-rg), where you can catch-up with the fantastic Cavan Day special, if you haven’t already seen it. And of course, keep sharing any photos or Cavan-related stories or memories with us – every day can be Cavan Day if we keep flying the blue flag and keep Cavan close to our hearts.
Le gach dea-ghuí,
Tommy Ryan
Chief Executive,
Cavan County Council