Masks for the faithful in Carrickfergus
Congregations in Carrickfergus to get face masks donated by Carrick Rangers co-owner and Flex vice president, Peter Clarke
Last updated 20th Sep 2020
Churches and places of worship in the Carrickfergus area will now be able to offer those who come to worship free face masks.
A cross community initiative has provided 18,000 masks for returning parishioners in the area this month.
Peter Clarke is a local Carrickfergus man who is behind the scheme.
He is the co-owner of Carrick Rangers Football Club and Regional Vice President of the international manufacturing and design company Flex who has provided the face coverings.
As Regional Vice President of facilities at Flex Mr. Clarke is at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19.
He is in charge of implementing policies and procedures to protect the firm’s 160,000 employees across 30 countries around the world.
The business normally designs and manufactures products for many well-known brands in multiple industries including Healthcare.
Following the outbreak of Coronavirus across the world the company turned its hand to making face mask - firstly for employees.
However, Mr. Clarke soon realized that churches and places of worship across the province who are beginning to welcome people back into religious buildings would need personal protective equipment.
He said he saw an opportunity to give back to the community, he added:
“There is no doubt that we will need to wear face masks to help stop the spread of this virus for some time to come.
“I was aware that maintaining a personal supply can add up financially, and I thought there was a great opportunity for our company to support our community in Carrickfergus where I’ve been involved with Carrick Rangers for many years.
“We estimated that we needed at least a million masks per week for factory workers alone,” he added.
“There was no choice but to manufacture the masks ourselves.
“The result was that we went from never having made a single mask before, to producing 30 million masks in just 22 weeks.
“Because of the success of that project, we are able to look beyond our own mask needs and make this donation.”
Church representatives from the Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and Church of Ireland faiths accepted the donation on behalf of their congregations on September 17.
“What we have done is we’ve undertaken a programme where we are contacting every single church in the Carrickfergus area” he added.
As part of the out-reach programme Mr. Clark aims to make contact with all communities and all religious groups in the community, he continued:
“This is phase one. We’re also going to engage with Carrick Rangers Football Club who is actually going to partner with us, and we plan a phase two coming near Christmas to help with the Christmas programme right across all religious divides.”