4 GLENSTAL NEWSLETTER Spring 2006
SPECIAL NEEDS at Glenstal T
he Special Needs Department was set up in Glenstal Abbey School in September 2005. While its location is still rather modest, it is housed in a small portacabin with 2 rooms, the department has nevertheless made a major impact in the first 5 months of its operation. It is a very welcome new development in the school. Already 40 students receive some level of support in their learning, which represents 20% of our student population. Special needs is thus not a sideline activity but already is part of regular school teaching and is seen as such by the entire teaching and student body. The level of support varies from 1 to 7 class periods, support being graded according to need. This allows these students to more fully participate in the academic program of the school and also has the added benefit of making their learning a more pleasant activity. Our goal at Glenstal is for every
ELECTED At the World Congress of Gastroenterology in Montreal, Canada (October 2005), Professor Eamonn Quigley (1970) was unanimously elected President of the World Gastroenterology Organisation.
OLD BOYS TIES New Style pure silk old Boys ties available from Fr. Andrew. €35 post free worldwide.
Let Us Remember John Dawson (1951-1955). John Thunder (1940-1945). Gerald Richards (1941-1947). Anne Ryan, wife of Michael, mother of Conor. Veronica Kearney, mother of Peter, Kevin and Bill. Pauline Woulfe-Flanagan, wife of Peter. Mary McElhinney, mother of Paul, Karl, and Mark. Liam O’Callaghan, father of Paul and Nicholas. Domhnall Heraughty, father of Domhnall Kevin Booth, father of Rory. Edited by Andrew Nugent osb Layout & Print by INTYPE Ltd.
student to get the most out of his school years and the special needs provisions are certainly facilitating this for many. Everybody wants to learn. We all have a natural curiosity to discover and learn new things. Some however meet certain obstacles on their way and this can often lead to discouragement. Our job in the Special Needs Department is to identify these obstacles and bypass them using compensating strategies and make learning the enjoyable activity it ought to be. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both students and teachers for their great response to this new initiative. It says something of our school that such major change was possible with a minimum of fuss, due largely to the flexibility and generosity of the teaching staff. Once again a sincere thank you. Luke MacNamara osb (1983-1988)
AGM
Disaster ( 5K), Nigerian Monastry (3K), School Rugby Tour (1K).
Sun. Oct. 23rd 2005
Particular appreciation was expressed to those members who actively participated in making the annual events of the last two years so successful: Henry Anderson, Tom O’Connor, Corrie Mc Namara, PJ Crerar, Josh Nugent, Tom Reilly, Mark Roche Garland, Ian Lynam, Stephen Kieran. A special word of appreciation to Greg Ashe who maintains and supports the Ubique online database and the Society website www.myubique.com
n enthusiastic gathering of ca. 30 members attended which included A Abbot Christopher and Abbot Celestine. Gearoid Bradley President, reported that the Annual Dinner and the Golf Outing were well attended in 2005, and in particular the Society is now communicating more effectively with the younger members and the Society Members as a whole via email and with the support of a small active young committee. The new members tie was launched in August and the first two batches have already been sold out. More have become available since. The developments with the website and the Ubique online, where all members now have full ownership / responsibility for their own details is supported very well by the Society. A notable feature of the online database is that todate no security or spamming problems have been encountered. A challenge for the Society going forward is to consider what “focus” the Society should take on now, now that we have the ability to communicate more effectively with the members. The demands on the Solidarity Fund have been relatively modest, but it is important that such a fund should exist and be supported. Contributions made on behalf of the Society during the year were Solidarity Fund (5K), Tsumani
John Coyle (1966) from Galway was confirmed as President of the Society, with Fergal Duff (1968) and Geoff MacEnroe (1959) being elected to the committee.
OLYMPICS 2008 Sam Hunt 1995-2001 “In January 2005, I was asked by Gerald Owens, Irish sailings top international competitor and a successful representative of Ireland at the Athens Olympics, to join him in a sailing campaign for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Olympic class which we will compete in is the 470 dinghy. A sixteen foot, fast and light, two person dinghy, with a trapeze and spinnaker. The 470 Class is internationally recognized as the toughest two handed Olympic class.”
www.myubique.com info@myubique.com
In Sri Lanka and Niger with GOAL he morning after handing up my thesis in early February, recovering from the previous night’s excess, I was pondering my route to financial success. This dream was interrupted by a call from GOAL and a week later I was in Sri Lanka sourcing $250, 000 of fishing nets for small fishermen affected by the tsunami.
T
I spent the following six months working as a logistician, initially based in the capital Colombo, and later in three other GOAL offices around the coast hit by the tsunami. My time was split between procurement (The dictionary has various definitions for this – all my work was honourable!), transport and warehousing. The most rewarding project in which I was involved was the construction of temporary shelters. In any humanitarian emergency, displaced people are initially provided with tents. It can take years to build permanent accommodation, so cheap but sturdy temporary shelters are often provided in the interim. In Sri Lanka, these resembled large garden sheds with a concrete floor, galvanized roof and wooden frame wrapped in thick plastic sheeting. Within four months of the tsunami, GOAL had built 3,000 of these shelters, providing a deg ree of security for some of the 900, 000 people displaced in Sri Lanka.
In August, GOAL sent a team to Niger to assess the threat of the predicted famine. Each year Niger’s population experiences a ‘hunger gap’ at the end of the summer. This is caused as the previous season’s food stocks are used up and before the next crop can be harvested. 2005 started with a severe drought, which together with a swarm of locusts, destroyed the harvest and prolonged this hunger gap. Two of our offices in Sri Lanka were combining at the time and I jumped on the opportunity to move to Niger. Soon my petit peu de français and Fr John’s French idioms were being used to explain how we would conduct food distributions in the middle of the Sahara. With the help of sponsorship from the World Food Program, GOAL organised a food distribution to 200,000 people around the city of Zinder, 600 km east of the capital, Niamey. Distributing the 3,000 tons of food necessary meant handing out 100 tons of maize and beans to as many as 2,000 families a day for a month. I spent the morning of 22nd August setting up two distribution sites an hour west of Zinder. On the way back to the office our car spun out of control, flipped across the road and landed upside down in the sand. Nazeer, who was driving, and I were
dragged from the wreckage and the next car to stop took us to Zinder’s hospital. Nazeer’s shoulder was dislocated, while I could hardly move. Realising my neck was damaged but with minimal facilities available, a GOAL doctor took no chances and taped my head to the only flat surface available – a door! Three days later I arrived back in Dublin and was taken to the Mater where they confirmed that one of my ver tebrae was shattered with 5 fractures. Thankfully I have made a full recovery and have had unlimited time to make outrageous plans for my future- oh for some career guidance from Br Timothy! The Glenstal Society and many of you made donations to both the Tsunami and the famine in Niger. On behalf of GOAL, thank you for this support; I can guarantee that your money was well spent. GOAL is always grateful for support from the public, which it especially needs at the start of emergency prog rams before institutional funding is released. For every euro donated by the public GOAL is able to raise another nine euro from governments and the UN. If you would like to make a donation you can contact GOAL on 01-2809779 or at www.goal.ie Fred Tottenham (1997)
DATES TO REMEMBER
Sam needs sponsorship and people who will take an interest. Contact him at irish470team@gmail.com or contact me at andrew@glenstal.org
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ANNUAL DINNER
ANNUAL GOLF OUTING
Friday, March 3rd 2006, at the Westbury Hotel (off Grafton Street). Reception at 19.15, Dinner at 20.00 (sharp). Continue the success of the last few years. Why not organise a table? Special terms for those who left Glenstal in 1998 or more recently. Contact John Coyle or Gearoid Bradley.
Friday, July 7th 2006, Castle Golf Club, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14. Further details will be available on www.myubique.com nearer the date. Contact PJ Crerar or Gearoid Bradley
Contacts John Coyle: Gearoid Bradley: Peter Crerar: Fr. Andrew
johncoyle@renvyle.iol.ie bradleyg@prospective.ie peter@tclplastics.ie andrew@glenstal.org
m. 087-2565863 m. 086-2544647 m. 087-2264077 061-386103-118