Remarks at the STAR (Showcasing Teamwork and Awarding Recognition) Awards Ceremony
Dublin,20th February 2012
Dia dhíbh go léir. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
I am very pleased to be with you all today for the sixth annual Star Awards organised by AONTAS as part of the annual Adult Learners’ Festival which takes place from today for the week ahead. I would like to express my thanks to Berni Brady for her kind invitation to join you today and to the team at AONTAS for their hard work in making the Festival and this awards ceremony the success it has become over the past years.
I didn’t know twelve months ago when I addressed the audience at the STAR awards that I would be back at this year’s awards ceremony as President. I am looking forward to presenting the Awards for the winning projects shortly as I am also looking forward to meeting the winners and learning more of your experiences as providers of adult and community education.
Today’s Awards ceremony is a very fitting start to the Adult Learners’ Festival, hosted annually by AONTAS. The Festival is now a major national event and a very welcome and important opportunity for people to learn of educational opportunities in their local areas, including through exhibitions to showcase opportunities and equally important to guide people as to how to enroll in the courses on offer.
You, more than most, know that easy and ready access to information and guidance at that early stage when an opportunity is there to be either grasped or missed is so important. TS Eliot’s ( Four Quartets) evocative words capture the sense of what missed opportunity is like, well:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
That those Exhibitions are so very well planned with providers and organisers often now incorporating seminars and workshops to engage more and more people, is part of the success story that we celebrate together today.
Opportunity, particularly educational opportunity, when availed of builds confidence and capacity in us as citizens and helps us to realise all the wonderful possibilities that await us in the years ahead (and something I referred to in my inaugural speech last November).
Education is, to quote, Newman ‘the cultivation of the intellect… to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it…to give its power over its own faculties.’
What better gift then than the gift of education and for more than four decades AONTAS has played a significant role in the adult education sector, its vision to promote and develop a high quality, inclusive, accessible and comprehensive system of adult learning at local and national level. It is to be recognised and lauded as the voice for many, education practitioners, local communities and learners alike throughout our Country.
I am very familiar with the huge commitment that Bernie and her staff have for the promotion of education services for communities in every corner of our country. I committed, when I was inaugurated as President, to championing creative communities who are bringing about positive change at local level and that’s why I wanted to be here with you today. I spoke too of the many benefits to society when we encourage the seedbed of creativity in our communities and ensure that each child and adult has the opportunity for creative expression. Education helps us to find that path to our individual creativity.
As many of you will know STAR stands for Showcasing Teamwork and Awarding Recognition. The large number of nominations submitted for the Awards this year, some 119 in total, is further evidence of both the scale and significance of what is happening to cultivate the spirit of learning and working together towards effecting positive change within local communities, and how that spirit abounds throughout the Country. I congratulate all of you on your very significant achievements, which will inevitably provide encouragement for others to strive to reach the same high standards. This ceremony provides the opportunity to bring those wonderful achievements to a much wider audience and on to the national stage where they firmly belong.
Ní neart go chur le chéile, we know we work best when we work together and it is also something we are renowned for in Ireland, that sense of community working together, in the cause of helping our own community or others, bringing about positive, effective and often life-enhancing changes, evidence if was needed that we Irish are a creative, resourceful, talented and warm people with a firm sense of common decency and justice.
The Adult Learners’ Festival is a magnificent opportunity for communities, voluntary organisations and the many adult learning organisations across the Country to showcase what they do. It gives us all the opportunity to celebrate with them the wonderful accomplishments of learners locally and nationally. The motto for this year’s Festival ‘Love to Learn’ promotes the positive message that adult learning brings benefits to our society that reach beyond employment and skills. It also sends out the message that learning is good for us all and at all stages in our lives and that we should embrace it accordingly. We are each born with potential, adult learning helps us in the quest, so often a happy and fulfilling one, to continue to unlock that potential.
In addition to the overall theme of “Love to Learn” each day of the festival has an individual theme. Today’s theme is most appropriate: “Celebrate Learning”.
This is what we are doing here today.
We know that career and indeed other opportunities are often determined by the level of educational attainment we achieve. For some, the lifelong learning journey has been a natural progression through primary and second level and onwards but for others that experience may have been very different and the path of re-engagement with the world of education may seem daunting and uncertain. Many of the groups nominated for the Awards today have done wonderful work within communities in helping others with previously low levels of education to resume the journey.
Recent research carried out by AONTAS (“Community Education: More Than Just a Course”) shows clearly the positive outcomes that community education provision has provided for many individuals and groups living with inequality in Ireland. The findings of the research demonstrate the importance of providing a range of education opportunities within communities to meet the needs of all its members and to the importance of community education for providing self confidence and encouraging personal development.
Our changed economic fortunes in recent years have served to underline the importance of continually updating and refining our skill-sets. The establishment of SOLAS, as the new further education and training authority, will provide a clear direction for the future of the further education and training sector and it will ensure the provision of high quality education and training programmes, which are integrated, flexible, value for money and which most of all must respond to the needs of learners, jobseekers and business.
We all have a part to play in encouraging the promotion of lifelong learning and this festival represents an invaluable opportunity to do so and not just for today or for the duration of the Festival, but beyond that and for the good of all adult learners.
I commend and congratulate AONTAS for their important work. I wish them and the many groups taking part in the celebration of adult learning throughout the Country every success during the Festival and I wish you all every success in your future learning endeavours.
And now we are about to move to the main business of today, the presentation of awards for the provision of services of exceptional quality to learners in communities throughout Ireland.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh. Comhghairdeachas libh go léir inniu agus go raibh míle maith agaibh.