St. Michael’s Catholic College was honoured to be chosen by Morgan Stanley to take part in one of its prestigious programme. Co-operation Ireland in partnership with Net Eire at Morgan Stanley Bank hold an annual tailored academy course for young people aged 16-18 from Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and London. Young people are selected for their potential as individuals who could really benefit from the opportunity to experience the corporate world, meet people from diverse walks of life and begin to think about and explore his or her hopes and ambitions for the future. Two of our students took part in the programme and their own account is below:
Maria Gonzales
During the two days at the ‘Banking on the Future’ programme, I was constantly being challenged to escape my “comfort zone”. At first, I wasn’t comfortable with some of the activities such as, presenting but the encouragement that I received from the supportive mentors and from the other students definitely helped me get through my discomfort and helped me build my confidence. The programme also improved my employment skills as I am now more aware of the expectations that employers have of me, in an interview and in the workplace. Furthermore, I attended the programme with a lack of knowledge about the banking industry but I left with a great understanding about the different roles available within the banking industry as well as the hotel and television industry, thanks to the opportunity we received to visit Bloomberg TV Studios and The Dorchester Hotel.
Ronald Mesa Leon
I would like to thank Morgan Stanley and their staff for being able to take part in this amazing induction. This experience was a very important vision of how working within the business world looks like, I got a real look into different worldwide companies and how they work, it helped me to find out if this is what I really wanted to do in a future for my studies and work. Everything from the lessons to taking us out was top class, at all times it was kept professional but still added humour to entertain us. This programme also allowed me to beat some of my fears, one of them being public speaking, we were asked to present a few presentations and each one of us had to speak, helping me build my confidence, not only that but was also able to enhance some key life skills like; communication, teamwork and many others. It was really impressive how much I was able to learn in 2 days, adding to the fact of being able to meet new friends and becoming close to them in such a short period. We also got introduced to many important people from different places, the biggest one being the ambassador of Ireland This is all thanks to the programme and how it was set out.
