A Taste of What's To Come

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Participants on the 2012 Work Taster Programme

--> Work-taster programme lands two participants permanent jobs in Ballymun 

Most employers hate sifting through CVs. It's just black and white text to them. There's no personal feeling or relationship with the person whose achievements and experience are listed within the pages.

What if you are from an area that the media has targeted as disadvantaged? Would you have the confidence to apply for a job?

A lesson for the country - Ballymun kids lift school attendance by 14,000 days

The Government is planning to extend the law that holds parents to account when their child misses school unnecessarily. The new law would also cover the parents of children under six years of age. Meanwhile, Ballymun has come up with a completely new (and possibly complimentary) approach.

A Local Development Company in Dublin has used computer software and a community development approach to dramatically improve school attendances.

By Conor Hogan

In 2008, the attendance rate for primary schools in Ballymun was worse than that of other disadvantaged areas and 3.5% below than the national average.

Local community and educational organisations to take action and in the past two years the gap compared to the national average has halved. Last year, 14,000 less school days were missed in all.

Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism for Traveller boys has fallen by over 24% while the attendance rate for Traveller girls actually overtook the national average for schools in disadvantaged areas.

So how did they go about achieving this?