GAISCE AWARD:Getting involved in your community can be challenging - especially if you have to join a card game, writes JOHN HOLDEN
THIS WEEK Transition Times looks at the first category in the Gaisce Award - community involvement. For some student, this can be the most challenging. Others think it is the most rewarding. It's the category where you must go out into your community and try to effect change by giving up some time to others through activities such as underage sports coaching, visiting the elderly, working as a Special Olympics club volunteer, volunteering with children with special needs, Big Sister and Big Brother programmes and Young Social Innovators. The list goes on.
Whether it's bronze, silver or gold, the obligations are the same, albeit with different time frames.
Louise Farrell (17) of King's Hospital in Dublin visited a nursing home for her bronze award in TY.
"I visited once a week and spoke with the elderly people there, played cards with them, and gave out tea and biscuits," she says. "I was only 15 years old starting it and every week the ladies would ask me when I was getting married, or getting engaged. I've promised a load of them invitations to my wedding in about 20 years' time.
"We used to play cards also, not poker but different things they would like to play. They were funny - you could tell that some people were cheating or you'd tell them the rules at the start but they would never last."
As part of the bronze award, Louise was required to visit the nursing home every week for 13 weeks, but she ended up visiting several more times. "I went way over," she says. "It was September when we started and I just kept on going straight through the year."
She is now in fifth year and is going for the silver award. "I have already started - I'm mentoring here in school. I have 10 people to look out for in school. I'm there for them if they need me. I'm definitely going to do the gold next year. I know it will be tricky to do it while I'm in the Leaving Cert year, but even if I could make a start on it then I could finish it in college.
"Gaisce helps me to achieve a lot of the things I've always wanted to," she adds. "It's always good to try different things. Some people used activities we were doing anyway in TY, like first aid, and life-saving. But it was important for me to try new things. There is a lot I want to achieve in my life and Gaisce gives me the opportunity and the motivation to try out new experiences. It's about pushing yourself to do something different."
