Shamrock Rovers Football Club are pleased to announce the launch of a major STEM education initiative in conjunction with Unite the Union and Sphero Sports.
The launch took place at Tallaght Stadium earlier today when children from St. Thomas’s National School, Tallaght and St. Bernadette’s National School, Clondalkin were introduced to the programme.
The educational resource comprises 6 x 10 metre floor mats that are designed as football pitches, together with 15 interactive robots programmed by the participants to perform tasks, such as playing football. This develops skills in sport, maths, computer programming and coding. The programme will begin this September in schools across Tallaght and Clondalkin with 5 teachers having being trained up to assist in the rollout.
“Community is at the heart of Shamrock Rovers Football Club and the club is continuously engaged in supporting and building relationships with the local community. Our schools programme has enabled hundreds of children from schools in the area to engage in physical wellbeing workshops delivered by our community and academy coaches. I look forward to working alongside our team of volunteers implementing this engaging and inclusive project, providing coding classes for children in our partner schools. We are proud to work with Unite on this initiative.”
Tony O’Neill, Shamrock Rovers FC Community Officer, SPEAKING AT THE LAUNCH
“Unite is very pleased to sponsor this initiative with Shamrock Rovers and Sphero Sports as part of our community work associated with the Unite Champions Cup competition. As a trade union, we believe that people are our most important resource and the most positive investment we can make is in people and their communities. With a programme of this kind, we can quickly see how creative people are when they have the right tools and when they work together. We believe that this resource will positively transform the way children learn. The programme will provide educational STEM resources to schools in the Tallaght/Clondalkin community. It is exciting, groundbreaking and inclusive and it promotes our Champions Cup theme of ‘Diversity, Equality, Community”.
Rhona McCord, Community Coordinator for Unite
Shamrock Rovers are the first football club on the island of Ireland to be involved in this exciting programme. Present at the launch today were Head Coach Stephen Bradley who is from Tallaght and first team and Under 19 squad member Aidomo Emakhu who is from Clondalkin.
*STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
