Entrepreneurship PrizeLoretta Moore was presented with the Fr Martin O'Callaghan Cup for Entrepreneurship at a Commencement Ceremony for seventy graduands in St Mary's University College. Loretta has just completed a BA (Hons) degree in Liberal Arts with History at the Falls Road campus.
In introducing Loretta to the Assembly, Mr Micheál Martin, Senior Tutor for Student Services at St Mary’s said:
"Loretta Moore performed best in Work Related Learning and was the student who most realised the aspirations symbolised in the Fr Martin O'Callaghan Cup. She left school at the age of fifteen with no qualifications. She worked on various training schemes and eventually got a job as a domestic in the RVH. Being from Springhill, she became involved in Springhill Community House a young adult education centre which is run by Fr Des Wilson and was encouraged to take some GCSE subjects which of course she passed with flying colours. She then did an Access Course in BIFHE (now BMC) and enrolled as a student of History on the Liberal Arts programme at St Mary’s. Her dedication to and involvement with the community of Springhill spurred her to do her degree programme work placements in her own home area where she worked in advice centres for ex-prisoners e.g. Coiste na nIarchimí and in other community centres such as the Frank Cahill Resource Centre and Springhill Community House (a place she considers to be her Alma Mater).Loretta has gone from being a young woman with no qualifications whatsoever to still a young woman with a first class honours degree gained in St Mary's University College, and she did this as a single parent of three children. Loretta is a shining example of the real meaning of access and participation, of the can do spirit, or as President Obama so eloquently put it "Is féidir Linn". She is a credit to herself and to her family and St Mary's University College is proud of her and wishes her well."
