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The Gathering Ireland is a national initiative encouraging communities to come together and organise events, encouraging anyone with a connection to Ireland to come and visit.
It kicked off at the weekend with the Emerald Isle Classic match between Notre Dame and Navy, which brought thousands of American football fans to Dublin.
Across the country, local communities are swinging into action – including Inishowen, Co Donegal. Here John Collins explains what the area is doing to bring people home.
INISHOWEN WOULD SEEM like a close-knit peninsula community in North Donegal, but its social network is truly international.
When it came to planning Carndonagh Community School’s 40th annual reunion, The Gathering seemed like a great resource for us to tap into. We know we have over 10,000 past pupils, which might be hard to believe coming from a small community but our diaspora are present in over 80 countries around the world. It goes to show you how much and how far the Irish travel. We decided this would be a great excuse to send an open invite out to people to return home for a visit.
Inishowen is a community, but one of the stark issues that does affect us is emigration – it always has. It is such an attractive and beautiful part of the country but unfortunately due to the lack of jobs in the area or the lack of particular jobs, people have had to move on often leaving their relatives behind and start somewhere else.
The recession, I cannot lie, has affected our area. Many young people have had to leave to find work in the larger towns or abroad and that of course is to the detriment of the area. It is sad to see so many of the young people head off and leave the area.
It really can feel like the life is ebbing out of a place but we have a lot of positives to offer people visiting and that is what we are going to show those who come over to visit.
The area has seen huge rejuvenation in the area over the years. It’s not only beautiful and scenic but we have a lot of amenities, just like any other town in the country.
The area has a lot to offer – that may surprise some people who are returning, but we are hoping that once people come home again they will warm to it. We are not as backward as we are made out nationally. Some of the past pupils or staff who return may not have been home in over 20 years, so we want to show all those that visit that although times and places have changed, our community remains the same. Yes, we are a small town but its people are great. You can’t fault the friendliness of the people here.
This reunion is all about showing our community in a positive light – to stop focusing on the recession and difficulties people face and look at what our area has produced: countless of talented people who are dotted all over the world.
This is a massive geographical area, but at one stage we all went to the same school. The reunion is open to all past pupils and staff and is going to be run over four days, with music, dinner and dancing.
The one difference in comparison to other years is the importance and usefulness of social media. Teacher Niall Havlin, set up a Facebook page to tell everyone about the event, which is taking place in August 2013.
After five days the page had 2000 friends, so we think we have a major event on our hands. We are asking any past pupils to root out any memorabilia or photos, as they seem to be very popular. The old class pictures that are up on Facebook are getting a lot of attention.
While this event, we hope, will have a positive effect on the economics of our town, it is really about the social aspect of it. It’s about old faces seeing each other again and we think that it will spur on positivity in the area.
What is important to us is that this reunion is about coming together as a community – and that is what I think The Gathering is all about. It is about reaching out to those that left last year, five years ago – or even 20 years ago – and welcome them back to where they came from.
For more information on the Carndonagh Community School click here or visit the Facebook page here. There is also a dedicated reunion website.
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Fair play young dude
We need to teach coding at a young age. Take religion out of primary school and introduce very basic programming to kids. It should also be availible for junior and leaving cert. I am learning C# at the moment and really regret i have not learnt to code at a younger age.
The poor kid , he is very young to be getting into the dog eat dog. We idolise tech “leaders” so much today , I hope he isn’t chewed up in the cogs
Is there an adult version of coder dojo anywhere? Don’t know if I would like to do it as a career but wouldn’t mind learning the basics. Coder dojo seems like a nice way to do that but don’t wana be shown up by a bunch of ten ye old! ;-)
Plenty of courses you can pay for. I’m not sure how many people will dedicate time to teach adults for free. Although there’s a huge amount of free courses online… Do a google for “mooc” to get started.
Didn’t realise coder dojo was free. Wouldn’t mind paying for a few casual classes but going as far as a night course seems a big commitment considering I know some people who did entire college courses and hated every minute. Will try some of the online options. Cheers.
edx.org have a brilliant free online course from Harvard cs50 i think its what it is called. Also FAS e collage do a great “Changing yyour carer to the I.T sector online. It prepares you to get a MTA qualification in Networking, Software development, or Database analysis. Its free if you are on job seekers and its not too expensive if you are working. I am doing both courses and they compliment each other very well.
Have a look at night classes in your local community schools. Usually quite cheap and no long term commitment. I think usually 8-10 weeks at about a tenner a week.
Best of luck, I really hope it works out for you.
And forget about people who did comp sci and hated it. Massive overgeneralisation here on my part but I find they only did comp sci ‘cos computers are easy’ without knowing what they were getting into. If you have the interest then you already have a much better chance of success than them!
Give this a lash Barry, http://www.codecademy.com
Maybe skip the HTML/CSS course and try the Javascript or one of the others first.
Thanks for all the help. Loads to look at there. Maybe the first thing I’ll do when I’m able to program is create an education comparison site! There’s so much out there, some offering certifications some just the training and knowledge.
In people’s experience if you can show that you can code and write your own programs/apps/websites whatever, do employers look for proof of training? Does someone in the workplace who may be just as able and “self” taught earn as much as someone who has a degree or diploma or does the lack of paperwork hold people back?
It’s helpful to have certifications in order to get the foot in the door but not essential. I’m self-learned and am an engineer in one of the biggest IT companies in the world. But I started at a technician in PC World.
There are also one year conversion courses you can do that might be worth looking into if you already have a level 8 degree in another area and are in the position where you can spend a year in college. As far as I know most of them are being paid for by the government because there’s a skills shortage.
Codecademy.com go learn a language… I bet you enjoy it and I bet you will want to learn more!!
This is a new one- I was expecting to read The Journal comments section had won the Nigerian lotto!!
CHRIST APOSTOLIC CHURCH(C.A.C) CREDIT UNION
Email: cacinternationalloanfirm@gmail.com
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GOD BLESS YOU as I await to here from you
Rev. Dolphy Anderson
Zonal Overseer(C.A.C) Credit Union
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