Ellen, Laura, Emer, Niamh

This weeks TY Blog post comes from Ellen, Laura, Emer and Niamh who are all TYs from Holy Faith Clontarf.

We arrived at the Don Bosco Care House on the Clontarf Road on November 16th 2015. All of us were looking forward to the week, even though we didn’t know what to expect. We are TY students in Holy Faith Secondary School, Clontarf and were volunteering in the charity as part of our Community Care week in school.

We were greeted at the door by Father Val, one of the members of the board of directors. He showed us in and introduced us to the office staff, who were all very friendly and welcoming. We then met Kevin and Tony who are in charge of fundraising. They brought us into the sitting room where we discussed what Don Bosco Care does. They also informed us of our tasks for the week.

During our time here, we will be planning and organising a fundraising competition to raise money and awareness for the charity. The project had already been started by two girls from St Dominic’s who also spent their community care week in Don Bosco Care. It was our job to continue with their ideas and put the plan into action. Tony brought us on a tour of the house and showed us the office in the attic, where we would be working for the week. We decided that the competition would take place between TY students in different schools with a team of six students representing each. We wrote a draft copy of a letter that could be sent to the students, informing them of the tasks they would have to complete as part of the competition. We also designed a poster to advertise the competition in the different schools. A write-up would have to be submitted as part of the project including details such as planning and finance. We continued working on the project throughout the week, emailing TY coordinators, deciding on prizes, looking at venues to hold the prizegiving ceremony and loads more.

We all really enjoyed our week at Don Bosco Care, and learnt a lot of valuable skills in the process.

Before we came, none of us really knew much about the work that Don Bosco Care does in the community. However, this week has really opened our eyes to a very different world of work, then what we are used to in school.

I would definitely recommend Don Bosco Care to other Transition Year students looking for a community care placement. All of the staff were very helpful and friendly throughout the week. It was a very enjoyable and interesting experience. We will definitely be returning to our school full of praise for Don Bosco Care.

By: Ellen O’Hara, Emer Moreau, Laura Cunningham, Niamh Corry. (Holy Faith Clontarf Transition Year students)