This article is from page 27 of the 2011-04-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 27 JPG
THINK of tourism in Clare and for many there’s that default setting which doesn’t allow them look much beyond flagship products like the Cliffs of Moher and Bunratty Castle, or the rugged beauty of the Burren or spots along the west coast of Clare from Loophead to Blackhead. But there’s much more – call them hidden tourism/heritage treasures in the eastern part of the county. Hidden because for many outside the east Clare catchment, places like Holy Island, Mountshannon and Killaloe go unnoticed and, to a large extent, untapped.
Maybe it’s precisely because of the fact that the tourism/heritage sector in East Clare doesn’t garner as much publicity as other parts of the county that the Clare VEC saw an opening and opportunity.
“There would be courses done on tourism around the county,” says course co-ordinator Rita McCarthy. “In West Clare and in Ennis, but this one was more specifically related to heritage. It was an introduction to heritage in the area – an introduction to the whole idea of eco-tourism and tourism. In East Clare, there is a lot of interest in the whole eco-tourism side of things. It was to try and work in with that and see where employment opportunities might be in the future. It was important to bring the course to the people.
“If you are unemployed and if you are on unemployment benefit, having to travel into a place like Ennis is very difficult. Travelling costs of € 30 or € 40 is a substantial amount of money. It’s to make it as easy as possible for people,” she says of the VEC Outreach programme.
The pilot project is now nearing its conclusion, with McCarthy attributing its success to the diversity in the participants – the different qualities they brought to the course as indi- viduals working towards their own individual goals, while always working in a team environment.
“The thing about a diverse group is that you get a good social mix,” she says. “You get people who wouldn’t normally meet each other. It brings together knowledge, talent, ability and all sorts of different things. There is the whole thing of networking and getting to know one another. When you go into local areas, you get more dispersed groups and you will get diversity.
“We were looking at this course in the hope that the results would see progression. We wouldn’t have seen it as a course that was going to start and finish. The plan was always to put on another course out there to take it to the next step.
“We tried to focus it around a particular subject – the goal would be that the people on the course would progress on to other types of education. I know one of them said very clearly that he wanted to learn more about computers and learn more about business studies and be much more focused in that area. When you hear that from people and you see the difference in them, that’s when you really know that it has been a success,” adds McCarthy.