4 Questions for Louise Cole
Well, after working in marketing and PR for over 10 years I knew I really wanted to change into education so I went back to college and I studied adult and community education, originally in UCD and then more recently in NUI Maynooth. I actually started off doing literacy tutor training and worked with adults as a volunteer for about a year, and I knew then that I definitely wanted to work in education. What ended up happening is while I was still working in marketing a job came up in a Youthreach centre in Navan, where I’m originally from. Now I have to be completely honest, I didn’t even know what Youthreach was at the time! So I looked it up and I went “Oooh, well that sounds interesting” so I decided it would be a really good experience to at least try for the interview and see what happened. I applied for the job and I got called for an interview and within 24 hours of doing the interview I got offered the job and all of a sudden I realised I was going to be working in Youthreach! I literally haven’t looked back since.
So why did you decide to become a Youthreach Co-ordinator?
And so what did you expect when you came to work at Youthreach?
Obviously it was very different. Like I said, I wasn’t working in education at all, but as with any job, there are always going to be transferable skills. I worked in an industry that was all about communication, so my whole job in marketing was about being able to communicate with people and understand what they needed and to try and meet their needs. Whilst that was of course very business focused, it was definitely a skill I was able to transfer. I didn’t start off as a co-ordinator in Youthreach, but I worked very closely with the co-ordinator as a Youthreach resource person. A big part of my job was communicating with students to develop relationships through which we could support them. I had a particular responsibility for looking after attendance, for example, so I used to do lots of meetings with students and try to understand why they weren’t attending and I would have drawn on those communication skills. But other than that, yeah, it was completely different. I went from working in an office, working with clients and everything that goes with that to working with young people and, as I said a few minutes ago, I have never looked back. I absolutely love it, working with young people every day is what keeps me going. So yeah; very different but in a good way.
by Megan Keogh Bray and North Wicklow YR Student