Ellie Gilbert (TY3) spent last week completing the UNICEF TY work experience programme. Well done Ellie - you are showing phenomenal leadership by getting involved in programmes such as this.
She has written about her experience below:
Hi, my name is Ellie Gilbert I am a Sacred Heart student from TY3 and in early September I applied for an online TY work experience programme with UNICEF. It was a limited course that only permitted 20 people per course. There were many course options including climate change; refugee and migration issues; global gender inequality; wealth inequality and poverty; discrimination and racism; sustainable development goals; children’s rights and activism and advocacy. I choose the children’s rights course and from November 1st to November 5th I participated in it.
What is great about the course is that no matter what course you choose they will cover most if not all the issues mentioned above! This course was a week long and runs throughout the year for TYs.
Before the course even started, they gave me an opportunity of a lifetime to write an essay or make a video about something that I would love to talk to the Taoiseach about, and the winner of the competition got to discuss their topic with the Taoiseach! During my time on the course, we discussed many serious issues such as children’s rights in developing countries, gender inequality everywhere in the world specifically looking into women and how much inequality they face in their day-to-day life, I found that class extra interesting as I am quite passionate about the topic. Climate change was also a big one we looked at. We talked about the COP 21 and issues relating to it. We also did a class on discrimination in the world and Ireland with lots of different types of discrimination on lots of different people.
However, it is not all serious it was also a lot of fun: we did kahoots, debates, watched videos and did a lot of group work activities. I would recommend this course to anyone who has a passion for any of the courses they have to offer. You will learn so much as it is a very interactive course and there is always room for you to voice your opinion. For me personally I loved how I got to discuss my passion for women’s rights with people who had similar or the same views as me. I felt I learnt so much on all the topics and I now have a better understanding and view of these issues.