The Variety Club of Ireland is probably best known for its donations of Sunshine buses to children's charities. However, its initiative to improve school attendance among children in innercity schools has been achieving results. The Variety Club is no stranger to organising large-scale entertainment events for children. The club, which is financed by fundraising, donations and sponsorships, has been active with children's groups since the 1950s; it hosts parties, day trips and visits to the theatre and cinema for thousands of children.

Such events are familiar territory for the organisation, but six years ago the club broke new ground when it embarked on its first direct involvement with a community-based education initiative. The driving force behind the programme is Oona MacWhirter, who was manager of the Variety' Club's offices for many years and is a former president of the Publicity Club of Ireland.

Although now retired, she has kept the school attendance project as her special interest; there are 10 schools in disadvantaged areas involved in the Variety at Work scheme.

"This is the first time such an idea has been tried by a club anywhere in the world. It came to me from talking to teachers, community-based gardai and youth leaders, who often mentioned absenteeism as a major problem which prevented the children from ever getting on in life," she says. "I have heard many stories of homes where nobody cares if a child comes to school and where they come with no breakfast and nothing for lunchtime. We began with one school and have progressed from there. On average, attendances have been improved by about 4 per cent in the schools we've been involved with." The aim of the initiative is to encourage individual children to turn up to school by offering a rewards system to the whole class for good attendance - a day trip to Mosney, for example. There are also individual rewards, such as tickets for the cinema and vouchers for McDonald's.

"The teachers tell me that they have seen a change in the children from a focus on what `I' get to what `we' as a class get; they seem to get a lot of satisfaction from the fact that they can achieve something as a group," MacWhirter says. "Just recently one group of children have asked for a computer as their reward, which was a surprise - we've never been asked for one before so I'm going to have to go begging for that."

Extremely reluctant to talk about her work on behalf of children's charities or the rare presidential citation she received from the head of the Variety Club worldwide for services to the organisation, Oona MacWhirter is also at pains to stress that the schools initiative is just one project in which the club is involved.

"I wouldn't like to give the impression that the schools project is more important than Variety's other work," she says. "The club is working away all of the time in all sorts of ways to look after the needs of disadvantaged children."