LISBURN STUDENTS CELEBRATE SUCCESS

Teenage students from Lisnagarvey High School and St. Patrick’s Academy, Lisburn, who successfully completed the Community Outreach Challenge organised recently in partnership with the Army Cadet Force Association have been celebrating their achievement with an event at Lisburn Civic Centre to mark the presentation of Open College Network Certificates and up to five credits towards qualifications from the Qualifications & Credit Framework (QCF). 

The young people who took part in a week long adventure and personal development programme also gained basic First Aid qualifications through the British Heart Foundation’s Heart Start initiative which teaches simple Emergency Life Support skills to help people know what to do in a life-threatening emergency.

Presenting the certificates which mark the achievements, Colonel Maurice Warnock, Cadet Commandant of 2^nd (Northern Ireland) Battalion Army Cadet Force, congratulated the students from the two Lisburn schools, saying, “The energy and enthusiasm of the Lisnagarvey and St Patrick’s students was simply off the scale!  They relished every challenge we threw at them and tackled every task with gusto and great good humour and the excellent results they achieved speak for themselves. 

“Today young people are expected to build up an impressive extra-curricular CV which they can use to demonstrate their skills and personal attributes to universities, colleges and future employers.  That can seem a daunting prospect, but we hope that the Community Outreach Challenge is a helpful step towards the end goal.

“Outreach was run by the Army Cadet Force Association and managed on the ground by experienced Adult Instructors from the Army Cadet Force, supported by senior Cadets who acted as mentors. We were delighted to bring the Cadet ethos to bear on this project and the Cadets who took part gained tremendously from the experience.

“The students who completed the challenge, their schools and their families can be very proud of what they achieved and be confident that they will achieve still more in future.”