BUSINESS in the Community Ireland (BITCI) is currently on the lookout for Limerick companies to get involved in educational programmes that aim to inspire students in DEIS schools to stay in education, consider further education, or enter the world of work.
BITCI offers programmes for primary and secondary schools, including Time to Read and Time to Count, which help primary school pupils improve their literacy and numeracy skills.
The organisation’s World of Work programme for secondary school students aims to get teens thinking about their next steps after second-level education.
Speaking to the Limerick Post, Andrea Lazenby Simpson, BITCI’s head of education, said that the programmes help companies make an impact on their local communities.
“If a company comes to us and they are interested in doing something, it’s a volunteering opportunity for their colleagues that makes a big difference in their local community,” Ms Lazenby Simpson said.
The BITCI Head of Education said that “we have both primary school programs and secondary school programs. So there’s something for everybody there in and they all have different benefits.”
One of the local Limerick companies taking part in BITCI’s programmes is Cook Medical, having been involved for the last number of years.
Linda Edgeworth, senior HR manager with Cook, told the Limerick Post that the programmes have been beneficial to both the Cook staff and the students they have worked with.
Cook participates in the World of Work programme for secondary schools, partnered with Ardscoil Mhuire in Corbally.
“We feel very connected to the communities that we operate in, and we feel that we want to do what we can for them. So it very much talks to the values that we have at Cook,” Ms Edgeworth explained.
Ardscoil Mhuire students get talks from Cook Medical staff, as well as site tours, CV and interview prep workshops, and an opportunity to talk about staff members from the different departments in Cook to get an idea of what career they might like to pursue after school.
“When the students come out to Cook, we’ll have various speakers. So, for example, we might have an R&D engineer to talk about what it’s like to work as an R&D engineer day in and day out. We might have somebody from marketing to talk about what it’s like to have a career in marketing and what it involves on a daily basis. We might have somebody from regulatory affairs or HR,” Ms Edgeworth said.
Staff from Cook who get involved in the World of Work programmes say the programme has a “feel good factor”.
“For us, there’s that real feel good factor. There’s a real strong sense of we really are helping them through that difficult time you go through in the teenage years to try and make career choices,” Ms Edgworth said.
Any companies who would like to get involved in BITCI’s education programmes can find out more on bitc.ie or by emailing Andrea on [email protected].
