Minister for Mentoring

This year’s annual Student Mentoring celebration took place in the House of Lords Room at Bank of Ireland, College Green. The Minister for Education, Jan O’Sullivan, TD, presented graduation certificates to the mentors and mentees who completed the Student Mentoring programme.

Our Student Mentoring Programme strives to encourage students to stay in school, increase their self-esteem and develop an awareness of the workplace over the course of their senior cycle. The final two years of education are extremely important for many students.

The 7 partnerships that completed the programme in 2015 were in attendance at the graduation ceremony:

With Simon Lucas, Head of Region for Republic of Ireland Marks & Spencer, as a guest speaker, the audience heard about the impact of the Schools’ Business Partnership and how businesses are working together to give young people in Ireland a brighter future. Two students, Leanne Sarah Cuff from St. Dominic’s and Salim Abeid from St. Paul’s CBS spoke powerfully about the impact the Student Mentoring programme has had on their lives.

The audience then viewed a video of Elsa Stewart, Yahoo! & Lauren Keegan, Ard Scoil la Salle. This mentor and mentee pairing gave testimony to the benefit each of them had gained from the programme. It became clear that Lauren a.k.a ‘Lola’ had certainly gained in self-confidence and was aspiring to establish her own business called ‘Lola’s Lips’. Lola & Elsa’s video can be viewed here.

Jan O’Sullivan, Minister for Education & Skills, gave a moving speech about the importance of a diverse society and how Ireland needs initiatives like the mentoring programme  to make a better society.

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