16
2002
Maynooth University
Frances Smyth 2002 BSc, 2007 MSc Scrum Master ClaimVantage
#HometoVote Maynooth alumna and former VP for Welfare for Maynooth Students’ Union, Frances Smyth, shares with The Bridge how she continued her interest in women’s rights by becoming one of the early volunteers for #HometoVote You graduated in 2002 with a degree in Biology and in 2007 with an MSc in Biology. Were you politically active while you were at Maynooth University? In 2002-03, I served as the VP for Welfare for the Maynooth Students’ Union, so I had an interest in basic human rights and in particular, women’s rights. Although you studied Biology, you now work with the software company ClaimVantage. How did that happen? My graduate degree from Maynooth University is actually in bio-informatics, so I had already begun a transition to interdisciplinary work. Now, I work as Scrum Master, which is a bit like a project manager. We design software for the US insurance market and I couldn’t really predict my job because it didn’t exist while I was in school. What gave you the idea to volunteer for #HometoVote? Growing up, I was aware of the rights that we didn’t have as women, so I knew that I – we – needed to fight for them; they wouldn’t
We had a massive surge in donors willing to help people get home to vote – more donors than voters at the start. As this took off during the week, we ended up funding voters within seconds. I was awake for two and a half days and then I went to vote and fell asleep.
just fall in our laps. It stuck with me and now as an adult, the need to organise and act came back. When the moment came, this happened very quickly. The founders set up the hashtag and I thought it was a great idea, but it was also very low key, so I started re-tweeting and pushing the message. I had an injury that kept me from canvasing, so I hit the keyboard. #HometoVote was originally meant to bring just a few people home to vote in the Eighth Amendment referendum, although we never questioned whether someone was voting for or against. After sharing and tweeting, we had a few hundred people at the beginning of the day. By the end of the day, we had a few thousand. Obviously, it snowballed pretty quickly from there. What was it like when this took off? It all happened over the course of a few days. I joined this effort as a volunteer on the Monday and it took off on Tuesday with the vote on Friday.
I didn’t have time to think about it until I woke up and saw the result. That’s when it hit me. The altruism blew me away. It was incredibly powerful. Did you have any idea that this would have such a huge influence on Ireland? It started out as helping a few people find the funds to travel back to Ireland to vote, so we were connecting a few donors with a few voters. We had older donors in Australia who had lost their right to vote in Ireland crying tears of joy as this all came together. I don’t think any of us were prepared for that.
“This hash-tag is up on the wall at Twitter as one of the most powerful tweets ever, not just in Ireland.”