This City Works

A new pathway to employment.

This City Works is a unique partnership between Dublin city-based community employment services and Google Ireland, helping job seekers in Dublin find the right job for them.

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About

Empower your career path

If you’re a jobseeker looking for career guidance, industry-specific training, apprenticeships, skills workshops or your next employment opportunity, improve your chances by connecting with This City Works.

We’ve had quite a few success stories from people who have engaged with our This City Works job partners so far. Learn more about our jobseekers and their journey to employment.

Businesses & Organisations

Meet the organisations energising our communities

We want to give local jobseekers the best chance possible to find the right job for them. This means connecting them with the community organisations below, who are delivering training and post leaving courses across a variety of industries and sectors.

This network of community groups aims to foster optimism and opportunities for further growth in traditionally marginalised communities. They are the organisations who are fundamental to This City Works.

Ringsend Community Service Forum

The Ringsend Community Service Forum is an umbrella group which runs several voluntary and community training projects and resources. The RCSF, in collaboration with the Anchorage Project, runs the ‘Train the Trainer’ course, an advanced vocational course which awards QQI level 6 training qualifications.

The Spellman Centre

Otherwise known as the Ringsend and District Response to Drugs (RDRD), the Spellman Centre supports people in their journey of overcoming drug & alcohol addiction, and helps them towards living a fulfilling and purposeful life. Through on-going personal and educational development, they support clients as they reintegrate back into their communities.

The Irish Nautical Trust

The Irish Nautical Trust was set up in 1986 in the Canal basin. Its remit is to provide a full and comprehensive certified marine and water skills training program for local jobseekers. With a fully equipped maritime training centre which includes workshops and classrooms, it aims to create opportunities leading to sustainable employment within the maritime sector.

St Andrew’s Resource Centre

St. Andrew’s Resource Centre has serviced the needs of the communities of City Quay and Westland Row Dublin for the past 50 years.

Originally a school building, it was redeveloped as a resource centre. It operates as an education and training hub, a welfare and enterprise service, a childcare centre, computer training centre, day centre and eldercare services, an adult education service, a community employment programme, family support service and a youth service. A new development is a construction training centre in Dublin Port.

The Anchorage Project

The Anchorage Project operates from the Old Mission Hall in Ringsend where it runs a community cafe and garden, a childcare service and other volunteer initiatives. Alongside these it provides various training programmes and courses: Train the Trainer, Hospitality Skills, Beauty Skills, and Barista Training.

City of Dublin ETB

City of Dublin ETB is the state education and training authority for Dublin city with over 47,000 (full and part time) learners. It’s the largest provider of QQI awards in Further Education and Training (FET) in Ireland.

It manages two training centres, nine Youthreach centres and an Adult Education Service in five areas across the city. It also provides an education service in seven prisons and funds a broad range of community training centres and local training initiatives.

Success Stories

Get inspired

You know the old adage: you have to see it to be it. It can be hard to imagine what success looks like, until you are shown. Across Dublin, jobseekers in less privileged areas are doing the work, studying and earning qualifications. When peers and neighbours see them doing well, it creates a halo effect of success.

That’s why it’s so important to share these stories, to inspire others to engage with further education through This City Works.

Lizzy Donnelly

Lizzy Donnelly

Ringsend community service forum

My name is Lizzy Donnelly and I run my own home bakery business called ‘Twice as Nice cakery’. I’m passionate about baking and creating special occasion cakes for my customers. I’m also a single mother to twin boys who have additional needs. So in order to be financially independent for my family, I created my business three years ago, which has slowly grown.

Balancing work with my home life is a necessity. Work needs to work around us. That’s why during Covid, I had to branch out to look at other ways of working. Through the Ringsend Community Service Forum, I learned about the Train the Trainer course.

The course was brilliant, as I got two qualifications on the one course. I undertook a Special Award level 6 in training and development. This enabled me to set up my own training course, which I currently run in person, called ‘Home baker to business owner’. It basically uses all my life experience of how I turned my home baking into a viable business, and packages it up for any other bakers out there.

So not only do I have my own bakery business, but I am now qualified to train others too.

Antonia O’Rourke

Antonia O’Rourke

Irish Nautical Trust

For many years I worked in retail. I had kids, and then I cared for my dad with Motor Neurone Disease for another seven years. So when it came to getting back into work, I wasn’t really sure where to start. I live in Bray, so am never far from the sea. But it didn’t occur to me that I’d end up working on the river Liffey!

 I’m now an instructor for the Irish Nautical Trust. And I couldn’t have done it without all the training. They were able to offer me so many courses with marine qualifications through their programmes - which would have cost me thousands of euros if I’d tried to do it myself.

I started off with an introductory marine skills course, then got my powerboat licence with on-water practice. I did my ‘Safety of life at sea’ training, as well as first aid training. Next I got my VHF radio licence and navigation certification. 

The training is conducted at your pace. The marine industry is very much a team environment, and I learned from my fellow students too, as well as the tutors. I now use my powerboat licence to take people out on the water during the kayaking tours. It can be really magical. The best thing about this kind of work is being out in the fresh air, even in the lashing rain.

Edel Hogan

Edel Hogan

City of Dublin Education Training Board

I’d been working in the financial sector for over 25 years, and was actually working in the financial department of CDETB when the opportunity to upskill came about.

I’ve always been interested in project management. So I signed up for the Google Cert in Project Management and started that course in September 2021. It’s so easy to do this at your own pace, and at home. There was a bit of crossover with data analytics, so I started the Google cert in Data Analytics in Jan 2022 too.

I found the learning experience really easy and manageable. The way it’s structured allows you to plan out your week, so you can figure out how much time to give the module. By learning from home, in the evenings, I didn’t feel like it was too strenuous. It’s just dipping your toe in. You get to do case studies while you’re learning, and if you’re not enjoying it, it’s not like you’re dropping out of college. So it’s a low risk in that way. Plus there’s a lot of support while you study.

There’s a real life support team to help you at every stage along the way.  It meant I had the training for my current role - I’m data manager for City of Dublin Education Training Board. For me, it allowed me to move from finance into the educational side of things, with no loss of income, while I studied.

Darren Dent

Darren Dent

The Spellman Centre

I’m a Ringsend native and work as a project worker in the Ringsend District Response to Drugs (RDRD). I come from a background of addiction myself. As a child I didn’t have it easy.

There was violence and alcohol at home. At school I wasn’t confident or academic. I had a lot of fear. The way I coped was to become a bit of a headcase. So I went a bit wild, left school early and spent my 16th birthday in prison. Selling drugs, stealing and eventually using heroin, you name it, I did the lot. I’m not proud of a lot of the stuff I’ve done. But I knew this wasn’t how I wanted to live. It took a while, but eventually I got help through the Spellman centre’s outreach programme and went into detox. With RDRD I got the support to recover. It was the only time in my life I ever felt a part of something.

The people at the centre encouraged me to do my level 5 in Addiction studies, then a diploma in addiction studies (level 7). I became a project worker at the centre, giving back - helping people like myself. Despite getting clean and staying sober for 14 years, and having a family and job I loved, I relapsed a couple of years ago. Again with the Spellman’s centre’s help I built myself back up slowly. You couldn’t do it on your own. So never be ashamed to say where you’re at - and ask for help.

Stacey O Farrell

Stacey O Farrell

St Andrew’s Resource Centre

I come from a socially disadvantaged area and from a young age faced many adverse challenges. However, I loved school and found solace in learning. I was the first in my family to do the Leaving cert. In the years that followed I overcame many personal challenges and came to a point where I wanted to explore avenues of personal and educational development.

I linked in with a career guidance counsellor in the Inner City Renewal Group/St Andrew’s Resource Centre. I was a lone parent to three children. With a lot of support, I embarked on my adult education journey with a QQI5 in childcare in 2017. I enjoyed the year but discovered childcare was not for me. So the following year I took on another QQI5 in legal and medical administration, followed by a QQI6 in administration.

On the basis of these qualifications, I commenced a community employment position as receptionist/administrator with ICRG/St Andrew’s in 2019. During Covid I completed a couple of professional Google certificates and a work preparation training course called STEPS funded by Google. After this I secured a job as a part time administrator in a local community development office in June 2022.

My children are now at an age where it is possible for me to attend Maynooth University, where I’ll be completing a B.A. in Community Studies.

Patrice King

Patrice King

The Anchorage Project

I’m a single mum with an 8 year old daughter, and I’m a home carer. It’s a rewarding job but it can be tough, especially when you’re an emotional person like me. There are tough days when you lose a client. Death is a part of this job.

It can be hard to shut off, which is I suppose why I really enjoyed the Dreway Beauty waxing and tinting for eyebrows course. It’s the total opposite of my day job, as it’s glamorous and escapist. It was a 2 day ITECH accredited course, which I did on my days off.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do the course - there were a lot of young girls doing it. So I thought, well what’s the worst that can happen? You’re never too old to learn something new. I loved it. I knew the instructor and she was so friendly and encouraging. She invested in her students, giving us extra time to practise.

She wanted us to ‘glow up’ and that encouragement only helped me want to do it more. I’m keeping an eye out for other courses now, there’s no stopping me!