St.Tiernan's College

Gaisce Awards Programme

The Gaisce Awards Programme is one run annually at St Tiernan’s College. It is generally undertaken by our Fourth Year students and seeks to showcase and develop further the fact that they are well-rounded citizens ready to play a key role in their world.

The St Tiernan’s students undertake four challenges. As their community challenge students have worked in many diverse areas ranging from working with the Western Care in the Clunin Day Centre, Crossmolina, Girl Guides, sports coaching, a road safety campaign and a community festival. The personal skills section has seen students engage in learning computer skills, guitar lessons and sign language for the deaf. Students must also take on a physical recreation challenge. Here our students have excelled at basketball, soccer, gaelic football, athletics and swimming. The students spend one hour for 13 weeks at each of these but must take one of these for a further 13 weeks.

The fourth section is the adventure section. For this the students go to the Achill Outdoor Pursuit Centre where they take part in a cross country 25km trek and camp overnight. Here the group must display their ability to work as a team in coping with the elements.

As part of our community challenge our students take part in the “Youth for Justice” campaign organised by the St Vincent De Paul. As part of this the students set up a display stand and give a presentation of the social and community work they have engaged in, in their community over the past few months.

Students who have completed the bronze award challenge have found it to be a most fulfilling experience and some have gone on to do the silver award challenge.