ALIVE celebrated its tenth birthday last week with an annual awards ceremony that included a massive, tasty-looking cake. Jane Kearns reports…
On Wednesday the 27 March over 1,200 students were awarded the ALIVE Certificate for volunteering.
The certificate for volunteering is a Presidential Award recognising all extra-curricular activities of all NUI Galway students.
The aim of the award is to reward all the time and effort students put into societies, sports clubs, campaigns, committees, volunteering and everything else that isn’t degree-related.
The ceremony always attracts of hundreds of students, staff and alumni, but this year it saw more than ever, partly due to the fact that ALIVE celebrated its tenth anniversary.
To celebrate this milestone for the program, ALIVE welcomed a number of students to share their volunteering stories with the crowd, as well as NUI Galway alumnus Tony Griffon, who told his inspirational story of how his small volunteering project became the defining moment of his life and career and subsequently led him to become the successful social entrepreneur he is today.
The ALIVE team also put together a short video showcasing many of the hard working volunteers and organisations around Galway, and what volunteering means to them.
To date thousands of students have taken part in the program, dedicating millions of hours of their time to a variety of organisations and changing the lives of those they worked with.
ALIVE is currently the only initiative of its kind in Ireland, but many other universities are following suit, bringing volunteering to Trinity College, NUI Maynooth and UCD to name a few.
ALIVE was more successful than ever this year thanks to the hard work of all its volunteers and the program coordinators Lorraine Tansey, Lorraine McIlrath and Geraldine Marley, who have worked tirelessly to make ALIVE what it is today.
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