Fantastic achievement for women graduates on Blue Door course

IT WAS a proud day in Ballyfermot as four women graduated with their QQI Level 5 certification in business administration from Blue Door, in conjunction with An Cosán.

The graduation ceremony took place at Cherry Orchard Equine Centre on Friday, February 11, where the Blue Door service is operated. Four women from the local area graduated on the day with proud family and friends in attendance.

Blue Door, formerly known as Ballyfermot Social Intervention Initiative, is a community development project that was set up to assist young adults in refraining from harmful behaviour and to encourage them into activities that will enrich their lives and that of their communities.

“Our primary focus is to work with people over the age of 18, living in Cherry Orchard who are experiencing intimidating behaviour or dealing with housing issues,” Sarah Walsh from Bluedoor told The Echo.

“We provide a wraparound service for people by coordinating a community response to harmful or intimidating behaviour, one-to-one key working, providing counselling and training programmes and group support.”

The course was funded by An Cosán, based in Jobstown, and the women were gifted with laptops from St Vincent De Paul’s community fund to help them with their studies.

“The course took fourteen months for them to complete, and it is such a fantastic achievement for them,” Sarah added.

“This is only the start for these women. This certification will now give them the confidence to go into the workplace or further their studies – we already have some of them looking to go on and do a level 6 certification.

“I just want to say a big thank you to An Cosán for funding the courses, to SVP for the laptops and of course to Cherry Orchard Equine Centre for letting us hold the graduation and a big congratulations to the four graduates.”