Building Bridges

This year, one of our assignments for our class was to be involved within the community of Spiddal in order to build bridges and truly make connections with the community. At times, this was difficult because our cottages were located 2.2 km from Spiddal and it is a very small town with an approximate population of 1,445 people so there is not a lot of activity going on particularly in the months that we stayed there. Even so, we tried everything that we could to put ourselves out there.

Michael and I talked to the Community Development Leader, Aiden, located in Spiddal by Tigh Giblin's three different times looking for opportunities to be involved in the community. At first he thought he might be able to arrange something for us to help out with a country-wide competition amongst towns in Ireland called Tidy Towns. This competition is to see which towns are the cleanest, and most well-maintained, so projects for this could include painting, lawn-care, planting flowers, and otherwise picking up trash and "tidying the town." Unfortunately, projects for Tidy Towns did not really start until after we completed the program, and Aiden was also concerned about our safety and their liability even if we could do anything to help, so we were unable to participate.

We discussed other possibilities such as volunteering with the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) at matches since there is a field located between Park Lodge and Spiddal. Again, we were there too early to be able to help with very many matches. Aiden told us that he spoke with people involved in the GAA concerning volunteer projects, but they did not have any work or suggestions. He also explained to us that there were extensive background checks that would take upwards of eight weeks to complete in order to work with kids in any way in Ireland.

Although we were unable to find a service project that would qualify for assignment, we talked to quite a few different people, and we talked to Aiden several times. Through our conversations, Aiden learned quite a bit about us and the Study Abroad program that we were on. I believe that we also laid groundwork for future trips, since we made Aiden aware of our program and the service assignment, and were able to build a bridge from our program to the community of Spiddal in that way. Although we did not successfully complete a project, Michael and I were successful in "building bridges" between us and the community of Spiddal, which ultimately was what the project was about.