On Thursday, 21st April our school’s SVP committee, The Aloysius Foundation, travelled to The Lyrath Hotel in Kilkenny with our teachers Ms Coburn and Ms Maher to attend the annual SVP conference for the South East Region. The event was organised by Debbie O’Halloran, the Youth Development Officer with SVP. She has done great work with us this year and has helped us so much in our first year. All the SVP committees from around the South-East came to present their work and talk about their experiences of working for SVP throughout the year. We set up a display stand to show our work to other committees. The stand showed photos and written pieces of our work and also a tree with leaves, on which each member wrote what skills they learned and developed from this year and flowers with a photo of each member. We also had the opportunity to view other stands and interact with other groups and hear about their experiences, which was really enjoyable.
Our President, Oonagh O’Brien and our Treasurer, Niamh Coyne-Chapman gave a speech to the audience about our committees work throughout the year. The girls gave a wonderful speech and we had a slideshow in the background displaying photos from the different activities we undertook. The speech discussed how our conference came to be and how we found our name, the many activities we did, what we gained from this experience and what we hope to do in the future.
In the afternoon we were divided up into different groups with the other committees to do some group work. It was a great way to meet new people and it was great fun. Our committee was then presented with a certificate from Debbie.
This year our committee was the first of its kind for the school which is the first school in Carlow to set up such a group under the Youth Development Programme. It has been very successful. We held events such as a Christmas food drive and toy appeal, carol singing, hamper packing, and our befriending project where five students accompanied the Delta Centre bowling to the Dome every Monday morning. Overall this year we have raised €1118.55. We presented this money to our local SVP branch on the 15th April.
It was a great day enjoyed by all and we hope that our committee will grow even bigger next year and continue to do great work!

(Written by: Shannon Murphy and Róisín Fleming.)