CSPE Action Project
The UN Peacekeeping Mission
By Jack Marks
For our CSPE project we invited a guest speaker into our class to talk to us about the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Mediterranean. Our guest speaker was Diarmuid O'Donovan Lieutenant Commander on board of the L.É. Samuel Beckett P61 offshore Patrol Vessel of the Irish defence force.
Diarmuid came into my class to talk to us about the Peacekeeping Mission in the Mediterranean Sea. The Mission involves patrolling the Mediterranean Sea looking for scared migrants fleeing their countries for better opportunities in life due to war or poverty in their own countries.
When they find some migrants they rescue them as the boats they are traveling in are very dangerous as they are tiny for a start, have a really bad engine or have no engine and most people don’t get a life jacket on them and no one knows where they are going or how to swim. So when the crew on the boat find them they rescue them off their dangerous little boat and bring them to safety in Spain or Italy. But rescuing the migrants has its own problems as there is a gang with big boats and guns who try to shoot the boats the migrants are on so the boats will sink. Getting the migrants off the boats is dangerous as most of the time the boats are unstable due to the amount of migrants on them. If the crew makes a wrong move or if the people on the boats all move at once it could spell disaster as the boat could capsize and drown everyone or it could tip the naval ship over.
When we were planning to invite Diarmuid in we had different committees to invite him in as the permission committee had to write two letters: one to Mr O'Mahony and one to Mr O'Donnabháin to get permission to let us bring Diarmuid in to talk to us. Once we got permission we had a venue committee who got us a room so Diarmuid could talk to us. But before Diarmuid could come in we had a questioning committee who came up with a list of question to give to Diarmuid to answer for us. When Diarmuid came in we had a welcoming committee to welcome him to our school. There was a refreshment committee to get him a drink or anything he required. When he was leaving, there was a 'Thank You' committee who thanked him for coming and gave him a reusable coffee cup from our school as a token of thanks.
The last committee which I was a part of was the Social Media group. My task along with Wayne and Daniel was to write up about Diarmuid's visit and why he came in and about what he said. The main skills I used while typing up a report on his visit was:
§ Listening to what he said as he was very interesting.
§ Reviewing everything he said and that had happened.
§ Using a computer to type up the report.
§ Agreeing with the other members in my group about the review and any issues we had while typing it up.
I feel my class was very lucky to have Diarmuid come and talk to us as he was very interesting and gave us a greater understanding of what he does to help the migrants.