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Thomond CC students - Local Limerick Businesses stepped in to help Thomond Community College youths acquire the work experience they deserve from their own homes! Thomond CC students - Local Limerick Businesses stepped in to help Thomond Community College youths acquire the work experience they deserve from their own homes!

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World of work opened up for Thomond CC students online

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Thomond CC students – Local Limerick Businesses stepped in to help Thomond Community College youths acquire the work experience they deserve from their own homes!

World of work opened up for Thomond CC students online

Every year Transition Years students are well catered for by businesses all over Limerick but during the lockdown, the traditional work placements were not available for TY students. As exposure to the world of work is a fundamental part of TY, staff & students at Thomond Community College were very grateful to all the Companies and Organisations that stepped in to help fill the void this year with online work experience.

Transition year Coordinator, Mary O Brien, was thrilled with the number of students in the school who were able to participate in various types of online work experience. “Our TY’s have been very well served by Companies such as Confirm, Stripe, Deloitte, Cook Medical etc, Organisations such as Limerick Youth Theatre, College of Further Education and Training Hospitality Campus, and Junior Achievement Ireland to name but a few”. These companies put together online experiences to help students experience the world of work and inspire students to think seriously about career choices that are open to them.


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Recently one of the school’s students, Aimee Aherne, was lucky enough to be one of twenty students across the country, selected to participate in an Oireachtas work placement week online. “The basis of our work during the week was that we had been elected as a TD,“said Aimee.”. Throughout the week, we had two projects to work on, the major one being that your group was to craft a speech to deliver as if you were debating a piece of legislation in the Dáil.  My group’s topic of choice was fast fashion. During our speech, we had to discuss what policy we were planning to introduce. We also had to discuss the negative effects of fast fashion and whom it is affecting.” Aimee added that she would definitely recommend this work experience as she now has a much greater interest and appreciation of the work that Politicians do.

Ms O’Brien went on to note that a number of the TY students had an interest in health-related careers after participating in a two-day event in March. “We virtually attended the Junior Health Sciences Academy ‘Early Careers’ Event run by Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board’s Schools Division who worked with the Health Sciences Academy, a partnership between University of Limerick, the UL Hospitals Group and the HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare Organisation, in organising this event. Other years they would have had students who would have visited clinical settings, but this new online event allowed students very successfully to be introduced to careers in health. It was an interactive event with plenty of opportunities for students to ask questions.  Students also were introduced to the world of STEM through the I Wish Event promoting women to take up careers in STEM and Microsoft Webinars introducing them to the benefits of working for big tech companies. Ms. O Brien added that the school is very appreciative of all the opportunities that students were given over the last year. “It’s not something we take for granted and recognise all the work that goes into providing those opportunities for students. While we look forward to students going back to hands-on work placements, we definitely feel that there is a place for virtual work placements too and hope that more companies come on board next year.” Thomond CC students

 

For previous stories on Thomond Community College go HERE

 For more info on Thomond Community College go HERE 

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.