UCC Enactus - Food for Thought.

Food for Thought Committee 2017/18.

While studying at University College Cork, I joined Enactus, which is a society made for entrepreneurial collaborations. I met Kieran Cunnane and became a part of his creation, a group called Food for Thought. Food For Thought was a mental health initiative that aimed to shed light on mental health issues and to aid those experiencing them. The Food for Thought project allowed students to use food as a catalyst to bring people together. While at food for thought, students were free to discuss their journey with mental illness and to encourage positive mental health practices. We cooked, prepared and ate food together which acted as a catalyst to make friends to bring everyone together. It was a safe space away from the stresses of college and the pressures of college nightlife for students to bond and make friends.

The chef and I preparing a main course.

A local chef volunteered to help watch over us during the cooking practices and taught us may tips and tricks to become better at cooking. During my time at Food for Thought, I helped to organise events while also posting on the Facebook page weekly. It was a really nice project where for a full year we helped to fight the stigma of mental health issues and create lifelong friendships. Thank you to Cork Penny Dinners for their kindness and sharing their kitchen and dining area with us during this time and for all of the advice they gave to young people who attended the events. Food for Thought was such a success and to this day it's one of the projects I am most proud to have been a part of, and some of my best memories of college are during my time taking part. All photos taken by Ali McCarthy.

Click here to see Food for Thought's Facebook Page

GOAL Global Collaboration

GOAL Global's Collaboration with University of Limerick

As a part of our Masters in Marketing & Consumption in Society, we were given a project to collaborate with GOAL and create an event to raise awareness for Climate Change issues in the world. Our class was split into two teams: A local team and a Global team. There were 26 students in the class, so each group had 13 members. The local teams project was to raise awareness of climate change by focusing on how local actions have global impact in society. The global team’s project focused on climate change at a global/worldwide level while portraying how we can help this global issue   in our daily lives locally. By giving half of the classroom an angle of research each, we each gained interesting insights on how we can both raise awareness and aid the issue of climate change. Both teams also had to organise and market an event in relation to their group’s main focus.

GOAL Mile University of Limerick 2019.

The local team divided into 3 sub-groups, as did the global team. This division into sub-groups within a larger team gave each student an opportunity to come up with their own marketing campaign for their events.

The local team organised an event on the University of Limerick campus, where they would hold a talk about climate change. This event was open for anyone to attend. The speakers included members of the UL Environmental Society and Sinead McDonnell, the Environment Awareness & Education Officer for the Limerick city council. This talk would both educate the listeners of the local impacts of climate change and what individuals can do daily to reduce the global issues which are affected. Subgroup one focused on a social media campaign. They used Instagram and they shared articles and videos on the issue of climate change while also promoting the event. They also designed their own images which visually showed the impact of climate change locally while also sharing facts and tips towards helping the issue. Subgroup two focused on the impact of plastic cups locally. They deeply researched the impact plastic cups had on the environment, and they educated themselves and students on campus about the benefits of reusable cups. They also arranged their own reusable cups and gave them out to students at the event. The third subgroup arranged the venue for the event, while also creating and promoting their own social media campaign to raise awareness to the climate issues we face locally on a daily basis.

The global team organised the well-known GOAL Mile event on the UL campus. This event was to raise funds and awareness for GOAL and the issue of Climate Change. I was happy to be a part of the first subgroups team. Subgroup one focused on the social media campaign by using Instagram and Facebook. Their main vision was towards re-sensitising individuals to the problem Climate Change, and by doing this the group researched facts and solutions to the issue while also promoting the GOAL Mile event. They released these facts and solutions every day on their social media platforms and also created a digital pamphlet which included all of the groups research and made it available online for readers. My job within this group was to take information and designed by members of my team and post daily updates on instagram and facebook and actively engage with followers. I also designed and created the pamphlet. Subgroup two took charge of organising the venue, music on the day and had a marquee and prizes available on the day of the event. The group designed posters which advertised the event and distributed them around the University. They also created informative posts and a video walking to the location of the event, and shared them onto the Instagram page. The third subgroup created videos to share on the Instagram page which gave detailed animations and facts about the issue of climate change while also promoting the event. Flyers were designed and handed out by the group, along with stickers which promoted the event and its social media pages. They tracked the progress of the event on the day, and gathered statistics of how the event went. They also created a promotional video of our event for GOAL to use to promote future events, edited by Sean O'Farrell.

Both events gained fantastic insights online, and both events were enjoyable and very informative for those who attended. As a class we would like to thank GOAL for allowing us to have this opportunity to promote two fantastic events for an important cause and thank you for all of their help and support throughout both projects. Click here to be directed to GOAL Global!