‘I was born in the USA: Up Stairs Altnagelvin’

Transcript

00:00I was born in the USA, upstairs Alton and Galvan, and at the time that I was born a

00:05few miles over the road I had several cousins born in the 26 counties in

00:10Donegal. So I have a number of cousins, being one of something like 35

00:16grandchildren on my mum's side, who are of a similar age to me and nothing

00:22separated our start in life except the border on our island, yet we had

00:27completely different opportunities as a result of that and I suppose that sort

00:33of highlights the challenges that we're currently discussing and the things that

00:37we want to change. The fact that people are not made aware when they're at that

00:4316, 17 year age around the opportunities that they have and what they

00:49have to do in order to be able to avail of different education paths and you've

00:55seen that very clearly as I was growing up and I was speaking to my family members

00:59who were working just as hard as I was, I was working as hard as they were and yet

01:03the the routes that were open to us were completely different and I was

01:06completely unaware of things that I needed to do in order to be able to get the

01:10same sort of education they were getting and vice versa and when I think of my

01:14cousins from West Donegal trekking to Dublin as outlined by previous members the

01:19challenges there for, it seemed ridiculous that they wouldn't have been able to go to

01:24Derry or Belfast much closer, much cheaper, much easier to attain their

01:29education there but because of the differences in our system there was

01:32another barrier in place and they weren't able to avail of that and they ended up

01:36driving four hours one way to go to Dublin to pay ridiculous rents and have all

01:43of the costs that are incurred in that. We know that this is a common sense

01:47approach we had at the launch of the ESRI report just a few weeks ago telling us

01:51that we need to see an upscaling of cross-border skills, employment, education

01:58and the benefits that there are for all of us if we focus on that and the

02:03people who get their qualifications in a particular place are more than

02:06are more likely to are to then be employed in that place and so it makes

02:12sense that we offer people as many