TY students at St. Patrick’s Comprehensive School in Shannon, Co. Clare have launched a new initiative called COMPanionship.
Led by the school’s TY students, LCAs and photography club Comp-Pix, COMPanionship is a project that hopes to comfort and connect the elderly in our area as they isolate and cocoon.
Teacher Jacquie Murphy explained: “Although created with local care homes in mind, we believe that the project lends itself to becoming a national initiative. Our Transition Year students were looking for a Digital Champion project and after some thought they came up with www.companionshipproject.org.
“This is a website created by students and staff to give the elderly a chance to experience something new through the eyes of our staff and students. Videos are taken from the point of view of the person to allow the viewer to feel like they are going on a journey with the person filming it. By not taking footage of the person filming, it also allows people to imagine they are with the person they would like to be connecting with.
Experiences include walking, cooking, playing with pets etc. Although only launched this Sunday, we are continuing to add to our content. Students and staff are reading texts and recording them to tell stories to the elderly,” Jacquie said.
Much thanks goes to Rosses Community School in Donegal for giving us some beautiful audio from their Meitheal na Nollag CD. We have put video to the beautiful songs to create a special area on our website with a lovely Christmas theme. It’s a fantastic example of a collaborative project as we have also worked with Love Shannon Group to add music and entertainment from the community’s Culture Night 2020.
Love Shannon Group played a key role in getting this project off the ground and we are very grateful to them for their support and encouragement. Our Photography Club, staff and students have also provided photos for fun and stimulating slideshows.
We are working closely with Carrigoran Nursing Home who have more than 100 residents and will be making Christmas deliveries to the residents in the next few weeks. Our students are busy making decorations for individual residents and for communal areas in Carrigoran and other residential care homes that would like to work with us.
Our hope is to soon offer the stage to local community groups and businesses to also add content to the site through music, history, spoken word etc. We very much wish that this site and project may provide joy, entertainment and connection to many people who need it most. Future plans are afoot to make a section that might teach people physical exercises to do at home and how to use technology to its’ full potential. We would also like to offer a DVD to people who may not be able to navigate the website.
We would love to talk some more about this project and promote that it can be achieved in communities throughout the country. It has already brought a boost in energy and spirit within our own school community and we hope that this continues into the future.