Irish Funds Wraps Up 8-Week Time to Count Volunteer Programme by BITC

Last week our Irish Funds volunteer group finished up the Business in the Community ‘Time to Count’ programme with St Mary’s Primary School. For the last 8 weeks volunteers have been logging onto Google Meet, 30 minutes a week, to meet their assigned group of students and to take them through numeracy lessons. It has been a great success, with positive feedback from both the primary school and volunteers. A special mention to Michelle Spencer, Anna Fenston, Lisa Baldwin, Laura McClean, Sara White, Joanna Lenghel, and Claire Read who volunteered for Time to Count.

Time to Count is a great programme and a fun way to provide numeracy support for 3rd class students. By the end of the programme, these students had become more confident in the skills that they had learned while interacting with their volunteer in the weekly sessions. They learned through card games and dice games, doing addition, subtraction, etc.

Programmes such as ‘Time to Count’ and ‘Time to Read’ offer invaluable experiences, impacting a young person’s life and developing numeracy and literacy skills at a younger age. Creating confidence in these areas give them a pathway to pursue and use these skills later in life. It is also an enriching experience for volunteers, allowing you to build your own social, teamwork and communication skills and also embrace our core company values. Not only did the students learn something new, but the volunteers definitely learnt a thing or two from their group!

We currently have ‘Time to Read’ taking place, with Irish Funds team volunteers and volunteers from several member firms – another brilliant programme for students and furthering their literacy skills.

Last Wednesday the Time to Count volunteer team had the opportunity to meet the students in person - going into St Mary’s Primary School. They presented the students with their certificates for finishing the 8-week programme, as well as a few gifts for them to enjoy. The students made lovely cards and presented them to the volunteers.

If your organisation is interested in learning more, please contact Germaine Noonan at gnoonan@bitc.ie or Anna Fenston at anna.fenston@irishfunds.ie.