Breakfast Meeting for Local Industry
20 Feb '12 7:45am - 9:45am
Many helping hands for new initiative....
St. Andrew's Resource Centre and the communities of Westland Row and City Quay are used to tacking change and challenge.
The community has long been used to taking the initiative in tackling its own needs and finding partners to support its own efforts. For over 20 years the St Andrew's Resource Centre has been a hive of activity, winning recognition and awards for its many services and projects. Like so many other communities, it has been struggling to cope with the fall out from the economic crash.
St Andrew's has fought not just to maintain the hard-won services built up over the years, but to develop its activities to meet the growing needs.
So when a local shop called it a day and the premises became empty, St AndreW's saw an opportunity to develop a new facility to cater for the growing number of people coming to its Job Centre with ideas to start a business, especially catering to the vibrant local enterprise community in the South Docklands. They also saw an opportunity to take an innovative approach by combining this with a new facility for young people, especially in the evening, to build on the work of the hugely successful local youth service. In this way maximum value would be got from the new facility.
The premises-formerly Helen's Corner Shop-was owned by Dublin City Council. The Council has long partnered St Andrew's in projects and were very receptive to the proposal to make it available for this new service. The Department of Social Protection were supportive and the well-regarded Inner City Enterprise (ICE) agreed to join in providing enterprise support. Pobal agreed to contribute to the cost of development.
Crucially, local architects, Tim Darmody Architects, volunteered to draw up plans to make the best use of the space through a highly creative design.
The project is moving into gear, with work already begun on the conversion of the building.
Next Monday, 20th February, local business people will gather for a breakfast briefing in the Pearse Hotel, 107 Pearse Street to hear about the project. Already links to local employers help to connect local people to job opportunities in the area. Their ideas, support and need for services could make all the difference in helping new enterprises to get off the ground.
Danuta Gray Non Executive Chairperson at O2 will speak at the briefing on Monday about her positive experiences in locally based O2 of working with the community and St Andrew's.
This is a good news story for our times: bringing an empty premises into use; a focus on enterprise and young people; a creative approach to sharing space and money; and a partnership between business, public agencies and the community.
Venue
Pearse Hotel Pearse Street