Northborough – Champlain College student Laura Cogswell, a resident of Northborough, played a part recently in helping to create a new Irish job initiative called “Hireland” while studying abroad at Champlain College's Dublin campus. The idea, first formulated in Spring 2011, was launched this past January and is more than halfway to its goal of encouraging businesses in Ireland to hire 5,000 workers.
Cogswell, majoring in mass communication, was a part of Hireland co-founder Lucy Masterson's nonprofit marketing class at Champlain College Dublin and worked with her and fellow classmates to brainstorm ideas for the initial launch. Students, along with members of the business community, developed a social media presence, produced promotional videos, and set up blogs. Cogswell, like many other students involved, gained first-hand experience working on the creation of a grassroots non-profit.
The concept of Hireland is to inject positive thinking about solutions to the problem rather than dwelling on the enormity of the unemployment numbers in Ireland. The simple goal is to convince small and large businesses in Ireland to pledge to hire at least one unemployed person this year. Eventually Hireland hopes to create of 5,000 new jobs for Ireland's skilled unemployed workforce in the first half of the year. In the first month of the effort, Hireland had more than 2,500 pledges and 150 actual jobs created through the program. Learn more at http://www.hireland.ie/.
When word of Hireland reached the United States, a sister initiative was started called UHireUS. The U.S. group launched its website, www.uhireus.org, in December 2011 and hopes to create one million jobs in the United States in 2012. The plan was also announced at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in September 2011.
