Focus Ireland

Today a speaker from Focus Ireland came in to speak to us about homelessness. This was one of the best speakers that has come in this academic year as he changed my views in less then an hour on being homeless and on homeless people.

At first when shown a picture of a homeless man on the city centre and asked to have more sympathy for this man because he is addicted to drugs I said no. Although after hearing what he had to say on the matter I did begin to empathise with these types of people. As he rightly pointed out living homeless on the streets you would be surrounded by drugs and it would be hard not to get involved. These people need all the help they can get to get back on their feet and into a home. As was said in the video shown to us "it could happen to anyone".

All in all it was a great talk and I appreciate and will support the work of Focus Ireland in the future.

Collins Barracks & The National Museum Of Archaeology

Today it was form 4A and 4B's turn to get to Collins Barracks and The National Museum of Archaeology while form 4C and 4D had their first lesson of Self Defence.

I have been to both Collins Barracks and The National Museum of Archaeology before but I can safely say I haven't seen all they have to offer. There are so parts to both places it would be impossible to se it all in one day.


In the morning went to the Archaeology Museum and the Barracks in the afternoon. The day was split up by a few hours free time around town. We got the bus to the different places.

 I found the whole day very enjoyable and I would go back to both again.

BT Young Scientist

The annual trip to the BT Young Scientist was once again an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately their was no St.Gerards representatives this year, but there was some very interesting stalls. A lot, almost too many, were about Ebola but there was the odd one that stood out.

The highlight of the show had to be titan the robot. There is always a robot that is the main attraction at the Young Scientist. Last year it was Rubik Cube solver, this year the dancing robot Titan.

The winners of the BT young Scientist 2015 was Alcohol consumption: Does the apple fall far from the tree? by Ian O'Sullivan, Eimear Murphy

Self defence

 

 

Today was the first lesson of Martial Arts/Self defence with Dara. While forms 4A and 4B did self defence forms 4C and 4D went to Collins Barrack and the Archaeology Museum.

With over 40 of us I knew from the outset that this would not be an in depth experience into self-defence but only a taste of the basics. After the warm up we split into groups of 3/4 and Dara showed us some basic defence techniques which we practiced on one another. At the end we were all split into 2 groups and we did a few sparring matches against one another which was the highlight. #bayganwho?

Our second and final Self defence class will be on Friday the 16th.   

Hamper Packing SVP

Every year SVP ask TY students to put together Christmas hampers. The hampers are given to people who are much less off and can't afford certain luxury's that  we take advantage of at Christmas time.

We headed down to the sports hall in the morning for a briefing. There was stacks of food and drinks laid out all around the sports hall. The teachers explained that we had only the exact amount of supplies we needed for the hampers so we had to be careful not to put too much or not enough in each hamper. We were split into groups, each group led by a 5th year, given a list and set to work on sorting the hampers. The hampers included simple but must have foods at Christmas time, for example roses chocolates.

Because we were working some quickly and there were some many boxes beside one another, things got messy. So my job at the end was to sort out the boxes so the lids could close! Myself and the rest of the group then loaded all the boxes into a van bound for SVP.
Hampers = Tick

Community Service 1st-5th December

This week I will be working with Wicklow Local Sports Partnership, with the Sports Co-Ordinator Garvan Hickey. The Wicklow Sports Partnership was established in 2008, and aims to increase participation in sport and physical activity throughout  Co. Wicklow. The Vision of Wicklow Local Sports Partnership is to “Increase participation in sport and physical activity in County Wicklow through the co-ordination and delivery of quality programmes, training and services”. The Mission of Wicklow Local Sports Partnership is to “Provide sporting and physical activity opportunities through partnership”.

Day 1:  I began my work with Garvan at 9.30 in his office based in Shoreline Leisure Centre Greystones. He gave me a desk and a laptop and put me straight to work. Most of my tasks throughout the day involved the use of Microsoft Exel. Garvan has to deal with a lot of contact information on a daily basis, so I helped him create tables to clearly show this info. Later on, he introduce me to a primary school and montessori programme called Buntús. Buntus is a motivating multi-sport programme set up by the Irish Sports Council, enabling a network of Local Sports Partnerships to provide teachers and childcare practitioners with training that can benefit children by introducing them to sport and physical activity.

Day 2: Today involved much of the same stuff as yesterday, although today Garvan allowed me to update the Wicklow LSP socail network sites. I was also looking at invoices from a few different sport companies regarding Sports Equipment. I had to calculate the price per unit after VAT and then display the info on a table in Exel. I looked at all the different companies and told Garvan which was working out the cheapest. Garvan then showed me some very interesting infographs on the participation of Irish people in sport, like the one shown below.

A more in depth version of these statistics can be seen in the Irish Sports Monitor 2013 Annual Report.

Day 3: Today was mainly focused Operation Transformation, which I found out today was set up by the Local Sports partnership but RTE seem to have taken over. I was again using Exel to do spreadsheets on places and times of walking and running events as part of getting the community involved in operation transformation. I then moved onto the facebook page where I posted several status regarding operation transformation and other sporting events such as Stephanie Roches journey to a FIFA award. The last task on the facebook page was updated an old and out of place cover photo to an up-to-date relevant one.

New cover photo

Day 4: Today was much less exciting than the rest. Garvan needed all the work I had done over the week to be transferred onto his computer so..this meant I had to review all the work and all the numbers to make sure that nothing was incorrect. This took me quite I long time but I was surprised by the number of mistakes I had made.

I only had a four day week because Garvan was off on Monday the 1st so I asked Garvan for a few days next week. (I ended up going for the whole week)

TY Musical

CAST LIST - THE WIZ

Dorothy - Leonie Delaney
The Wiz - Gavin Dowd
The Scarecrow - Evin Kierans
The Tin Man - Sam Shepard
The Lion - Dominic Corrigan
Aunty Em - Kirsti Connole
The Gate Keeper - Art Punch
Evilene - Robyn Jones
Glinda - Emily Byrne
Evilene's Slave - Muireann Farrell
Uncle Henry - Caleb Powell
Munchkin 1 - Jamie (Lord Jully) O'Sullivan
Munchkin 2 - Sean Kirwan
Munchkin 3 - Killian Beashal
Munchkin 4 - Bríd O'Donnell
Flying Monkey - Ethan Forbes-Roe
Crows - Eoin Blunnie, Liam Noonan, Mark Cullen, Rob Keating
Yellow Brick Road -  Claudia McCabe, Rebecca Rock, Lucy Warde, Marfa O'Connell, Cameron Brady