We just love seeing our name in print and it’s everywhere we look at the moment! Following our B!G Showcase, we’ve had coverage in the Carlow Nationalist, The Argus, Kilkenny People and the Limerick Leader while radio stations Tipp FM, KCLR and Limerick Today have been interviewing students and some of The B!G Idea team. The media is picking up on the winners and their winning B!G ideas but also spending some time discussing the programme.
Kilkenny People shared the experience from the perspective of Kilkenny Youthreach. Youthreach is a training and work experience programme that gives a second chance to early school leavers who can choose to take a Leaving Certificate Applied programme or traditional Leaving Certificate subjects. There were two separate projects submitted this year from Kilkenny Youthreach, one of which won the Mental Health category. The article went on to talk about The B!G Idea programme and how this year as well as having a Transition Year programme we are trialling it with neurodivergent students.
The Limerick Leader wrote about the number of projects which were submitted by students from the Limerick area with 45% of them focusing on the mental health sector.
The Carlow Nationalist picked up on being the winning county with the headline ‘St Leo’s scoop national award with creative big ideas for the future’. They named the winning team members and spoke to their teacher, Deirdre Wilson. ‘The girls picked up an idea and did so much research work on it. They emailed their mentors in The B!G Idea and got so much support from them. I’m so incredibly proud of them.’

As well as St Leo’s College, The Nationalist included Borris Vocational School, also from the county in their article as the climate change category was won by a B!G idea for portable wind turbines.
The Argus shared their local dream team which was from Bush Post Primary school winning the category for Equality. They spoke about the programme being delivered to Transition Year students and Youthreach and Leaving Cert Applied as well.
The radio stations did some upbeat and fun interviews. KCLR had the overall winning team and some members from the Kilkenny Youthreach category winners in to the studio which was a bit of a tight squeeze! Head of Education, Fiona Byrne was on the phone line filling the listeners in on all things B!G Idea.
Tipp FM named the three students from Spark Youth who won the Equality category and said that the judges had been left with ‘a lasting smile on their faces as they had managed to make a website that authentically meets the needs of the LGBTQ person’. The TY coordinator, Mary Gorey spoke about the project and the team’s commitment to it.
Limerick Today spoke to teachers, Donal Enright from Desmond College and Conor Power from Colaiste Chiarain about their winners. Donal spoke about the research that went into the winning entry from their school, Geodesic Homes and the model that was developed by the team of the idea. He complimented the girls’ ability to work together, to coordinate with other tasks that were going on and the artistic, creative outcome. Conor spoke about their winning healthcare project, Dr Disease and how the boys on the team had used their tech skills to get involved in robotics and app development. He went on to praise the provisions provided by The B!G Idea and the access to mentors who are working in these areas that feed directly back to students on the ideas aswell as the programme of resources and videos for the classes.
All media highlighted the need to raise funds in order to cater for the growing number of students on our waiting list for 2023. We can’t stop and won’t stop until everyone knows about the value of creative thinking skills.
If you would like to help more students to avail of the B!G Idea initiative please get in touch!

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