What a year we’ve had! Moving on this year from doing all of our classes online, we had our first year of delivering the programme in the classroom. We met some of our students in person and we finally got to meet lots of our mentors. There have been too many highs to mention them all but we did a little round robin of the team to find out what their top 12 best B!G moments of 2022 were:
The B!G Showcase and being able to welcome some of our partners and mentors in-house. The Showcase is always a B!G highlight as it signifies so much but having so many mentors and partners at it this year made it extra special.
Youthreach team winning the Mental Health category at the Showcase. This was an extra special win as the Youthreach programme was a pilot one in 2022 and to see them go on and win a category was incredible.
Filming in schools and meeting students and teachers around the country. Kim and Fiona did a whistle-stop tour of schools in May and it was amazing to see the programme in operation and landing with the students.
The finished impact report and how that captured The B!G Idea story and journey in one place. This was a huge piece of work for us and we are so proud of the outcome.
Our Mentor event – we had waited for this day for so long and it was so great to finally meet people face to face! We had a wonderful evening in the Dean Hotel in Dublin with Mentors new and old joining us.
Filming the lessons – this was a new experience for us and it was so much fun! All the hours of plugging away to get the lessons together and then seeing them come to life in Graco Studios was momentous.
As we are a remote working team we don’t get many opportunities to let our hair down with each other. So the team bonding day/night in Carlow in October was a lot of fun!
EU Project – In August Kim and Niamh took a trip to Denmark where they were hosted by Kaospilot who are leading the EU project and Niamh followed this up in November with a trip to Greece.
Winning the SEI impact award and Rethink funding on the SAME day (while on holiday at that!!) We followed this up this month by winning the Aviva fund. Massive success from a little (hard-working) team!
Launching the 2nd year pilot programme and seeing their B!G Ideas come to life.
Board match – in October Kim and Fiona talked (even more than normal) to all sorts of interesting prospective Board members and as a result we now have 5 superstar new Board members.
Seeing last year’s winners go to Accenture to develop their idea further and give them an insight into the industry. This hands-on experience is so unique and the experience was so rewarding for all of us.
Happy Christmas one and all. Thank you so much for all your support this year. We can’t wait for 2023.
