Business in the Community Cadburys' Mentoring Programme

'The Cadburys mentoring programme started in 5^th Year. I think it’s great!

I really appreciated Germaine, who runs the programme for picking my application because it’s a good programme and you can learn a lot from it. I was really excited because I thought it was a good opportunity to find out about the career that I’m interested in- becoming a fireman.

Ten of us were picked, and we were then assigned a mentor. The mentor I was given is a chap named Duncan, who is also cool and fancies Germaine. Nah- just kidding! My mentor is great. He gives me lots of information about the Dublin Fire Brigade.

The other people in the mentoring programme are:

Decko Webster, Stacey Grehan, Amanda Kirwan, Jason Kelly, Clare Bligh, Nicola Conroy, Mark Spelman and Daniel O’Driscoll. They were also given separate mentors. All the mentors work in Cadburys.  

We meet up to talk in the canteen in the chocolate factory, and go on trips. When we go to talk to them, we talk about careers, and get to know each other. They buy us lunch if we want which I think is really nice. The food isn’t really that nice in the canteen. That’s why my mentor is the best because he gets us proper rolls and drinks.

We went Ice-Skating and Go-Karting, and the Fire-Brigade. When we went on the trip to the Fire-Bragade training centre, we were talking to a chap who gave us information on what to do to become a fireman, what to have on your CV applying for it. We also got to see the Fireman train, which I thought was brilliant. I could picture myself wearing one of those suits, training my ass off! They train in loads of different things, like first aid, putting out fires, climbing ladders, radiation spills'

By Darren Murphy