We’re excited to announce that today is the official launch date of the National Centre for City Connects Ireland (NCCCI), which will be based at Mary Immaculate College (MIC) in Limerick.
The new National Centre will enable staff at Mary Immaculate College to provide local technical and research support to Dublin’s City Connects schools, and allow City Connects to scale in Ireland.
The City Connects pilot program in Dublin’s North East Inner City was implemented in 10 schools in the fall of 2020, thanks to the work of City Connects staff and Irish educators.
“It’s wonderful to see this excellent intervention make a difference for young people in Ireland as well as in the United States.”
Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development
“These schools are part of the national Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) program, which serves students who are designated as being at risk of educational disadvantage and social exclusion,” according to a Boston College news story.
“NCCCI’s launch is the culmination of five years of piloting, testing, and refining the City Connects model,” Mary Walsh, City Connects’ Executive Director, says in the news story. “The Irish educational community widely acknowledges the program’s success in providing every student a tailored plan of services and enrichments to address the student’s needs, strengths, and interests. We are delighted to share this approach to ‘whole child education,’ and to bring it to bear on poverty’s impact within Ireland’s high performing school system.”
Eucharia McCarthy, the Director of MIC’s Curriculum Develop Unit, the home of the new National Centre, adds, “We believe that City Connects holds the potential to enhance the DEIS’s scheme through building on existing successes and supports and increasing their effectiveness through collaboration and partnership.”
The National Centre’s work will build on a strong foundation. To date, the work of City Connects Coordinators in Dublin has included providing new opportunities for students such as sports, dance, and a Lego Club. Irish officials have praised City Connects. And in March, a group of Dublin’s City Connects principals came to Boston to collaborate with Boston College’s City Connects staff.
Commenting on the international collaboration behind the launch of the new National Centre, Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, says:
“We are thrilled about the launch of the new City Connects center at Mary Immaculate College. Our partnership with MIC colleagues, and with Irish educators and policymakers, has been very productive. The program has proven itself to be both cost-effective and highly successful at achieving academic and whole person outcomes for students in challenging circumstances. It’s wonderful to see this excellent intervention make a difference for young people in Ireland as well as in the United States.”
We look forward to seeing how the continued reach of City Connects — in the United States, Ireland, and potentially other countries — provides children with the right services at the right time so they can grow and thrive.
