Trinity Global Relations recently interviewed Iseult Ward (Founder & CEO of the Irish company Foodcloud).
1. What is FoodCloud and how did you come up with the idea?
FoodCloud is a social enterprise that connects businesses with surplus food and charities in the community who need it. It’s essentially a platform that lets charities know there’s food available, and allows them to collect it, eliminating food waste too!
Marielle Kelly is one of Trinity’s Careers Advisors. She regularly travels with the TCD Global team to speak to students around the world, and will be attending our upcoming US Open Days in New York and Boston.
There are so many ways to develop your skills and learn outside of the classroom while studying at Trinity College Dublin. Great grades are important, but employers look for so much more than that. They want to hire exceptional graduates who can demonstrate their abilities through involvement in activities outside of the curriculum. Trinity College Dublin provides and promotes many ways for you to get involved, here are five ideas to get you started!
The opportunity to be active in a society is part of what makes the Trinity experience so unique. From getting involved in debating as part of our famous Hist and Phil societies, to trying out your skills on the stage with the Players group, to managing your own stock portfolio with the Student Managed Fund, there really is something for everyone when it comes to societies. Not only will you have great fun, you’ll get to grow your network and develop skills like public speaking, marketing or event management. Trinity has over 200 societies and sporting teams for you to join. More information is available online: http://www.trinitysocieties.ie/
We have a state-of-the art sports centre and over 40 sports clubs. Employers love to see that students have taken part in a sport, because it shows drive and commitment – fitting in regular training sessions isn’t easy! Being part of a sports team, like our rugby or ultimate Frisbee teams, or Gaelic football if you want to try our national sport, is a great way to prove that you are a great team player. Or perhaps you’re more interested in individual sports like athletics, golf or boxing, and these can really demonstrate your ability to motivate yourself to succeed.
We’re a target university for top graduate employers like Bank of America, KPMG, Deloitte, PWC and more, and the Careers Advisory Service advertises hundreds of work experience and internship opportunities every year. Doing a summer internship is a great way to get work place experience and understanding what type of career you would like to have after college. It can be tough to decide your next steps, so the more practical experience you can get in the work place, the better placed you will be to make decisions about your future or your next direction. Employers will appreciate that instead of spending all your summers on a beach, you were proactive and did something to improve your employability.
Competing, and succeeding, looks fantastic on your resume. It highlights your competitive streak, and shows how you are able to get ahead of the crowd and outperform your peers. That’s the kind of graduate employers like to hire! Depending on your interests you could take part in competitions such as Google’s Online Marketing Challenge, the Deloitte Top Technology Competitiong, the GradIreland National Student challenge and more.
Volunteering is a brilliant way of contributing to society and developing and demonstrating a whole range of skills and attributes. It shows that you have a social conscience, but it also displays initiative and a strong work ethic, because it takes work to balance different commitments. Depending on the type of volunteering you do, you will also develop skills such as teaching if you support a younger person through TCD’s Voluntary Tuition Programme, or supporting others through our S2S student mentoring initiative, or your ability to work in different cultural situations if you choose to go overseas with SUAS and work on educational projects in Kenya or India. You will get life experience, you’ll learn new things, and you could also get a reference. There’s so much to gain when you give back!
Recently there has been a strong push for student engagement with charities at Trinity, as seen during RAG ( Raise and Give ) week. During RAG week different societies and organizations within college compete to raise money for their respective causes. RAG week has been a part of Irish student life for a long time, and every year it keeps on growing and expanding to support more local charities and causes.
Specifically in Trinity it is organised and run by the Students’ Union and Trinity Volunteering, and is supported by Trinity alumni via a grant of €10,000 matched funding. This has been a great incentive for Trinity Societies, because now they know for every euro they raise they get another one from matching, allowing them to give more to their preferred charity/cause.
One of Trinity’s new charities is “Change for Change”, an initiative set up by a few Trinity students to tackle Dublin’s homeless issue. “Change for Change” started in September by 5 trinity students (Fiona, Amr, Jill, Pamela, Timmy); its aim was to change the concept of homeless charities, and empower people to be able to help themselves. They proposed a new program including: weekly classes on building CV’s; accommodation for the period of program; and internships with companies to give candidates relevant work experience. Above all, after the 6 month program is complete, they aim for each participant in the program to be in full employment, using help from partnering agencies/companies.
This program started to grow, and took on 3 more students to manage the additional workload( Derek, Mary, Rebecca ). Since then, the program has reached new heights and has been showing great promise. During RAG week they set out a Treasure hunt around campus with a twist. Some of the clues were pretty easy to find (’15-love’, being the tennis courts), while others required a bit more thought. Students walked around college and had to take selfies with the respective objects they found. This, obviously, brought out some hilarious pictures!
“Change for Change” is set to hit the ground running and become one of Trinity’s leading NPOs set up by students. Click below to check out the Facebook page and see how it’s getting on:
https://www.facebook.com/EnactusChangeForChange
Amr is a third year Bio-engineering student working as a Student Ambassador in the Global Room who set up “Change for Change” this year.
Teaching English abroad during the summer sounds like a good idea to many students, combining the opportunity to travel and the chance to contribute to society. However, many available programmes show a preference for students with teaching qualifications, or who are currently studying teaching courses. That was until I found a ‘golden ticket’ among my college e-mails from Trinity, advertising for students from any course to teach abroad together with Learning Enterprises (a non-profit, student-run organization) during the summer.
Rajsi talks about her experiences as a student ambassador last year.
Last year I applied as a young and inexperienced fresher to be a student ambassador with Education in Ireland. I had had no idea how my first year would be, but by the end of it I was one of Trinity’s ambassadors. The process took quite a while, but the joy of actually being selected, and being part of the university that had the most student ambassadors was totally worth it!
The programme required me to capture my first year of living in Ireland and in so doing to help the students who were considering Ireland as their prospective study abroad destination. I met some wonderful people and made some wonderful memories.
The year started with an incredible training session where we were taught about everything from photography to making videos and writing in a way that makes your words come alive. We were then introduced to Gaelic football and made to learn that craic is a real uncensored word that actually means fun. (Tip: it is pronounced ‘crack’.)
Overall it was an absolutely unreal year filled with some beautiful moments, fun things to learn, some brilliant videos and interviews, and it all concluded with an amazing award ceremony, where we were congratulated for our work by no other than than Taoiseach (Irish version of a Prime Minister) Enda Kenny.
…There were also some amazing selfies involved, but hey at least I made sure of using the photographic skills I learned!
So go on, apply to have the same fabulous year I had last year. You won’t regret it, I promise.
Find out more about the Education in Ireland Ambassador Program: EI Ambassador Program
To apply to be an ambassador for 2014/15, download the application form and email it to TCDGlobalRoom@tcd.ie by 10 October 2014: Application Form 2014
The World of Trinity 