Employees of a range of Irish companies are volunteering their time to go into classrooms and involve teenagers in the real-life world of work.

Junior Achievement Ireland and the Schools Business Partnership, run by the Business in the Community Ireland (BITC) organisation, are two of the main programmes operating in this country to match workplace expertise with kids who would benefit from career mentors.

BITC runs several programmes that match career and business skills with the needs of students. These programmes cater specifically for students from underachieving schools. It is currently working with 51 schools in Dublin, Wicklow, Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Galway. Companies taking part in the employersupported volunteering programmes include Abbott Laboratories Ireland, AIB, Cisco, IBM, VHI and Marks & Spencer, among others.

As part of the organisation's Skills at Work programme, company employees go into schools to talk about life at work. In some areas, such as James's Street CBS in the Liberties in Dublin, which is right beside Diageo headquarters, or Greendale Community School in Kilbarrack in Dublin, which is near Cadbury, pupils' parents may be working in the company and they would have lived near it all their lives, but they themselves might never have been inside the gates. The programme also includes a site visit and talks from people in different roles about their particular jobs, plus a CV workshop, interview skills and feedback sessions.

"A couple of people from the human resources department will come in and say 'This is what we want on a CV , , if it's not up to scratch, we'll bin it', " says Germaine Noonan, education programme executive. "The teachers say that is quite powerful , , they can say it until the cows come home but when someone from outside says it, the students listen."

BITC also runs a one-toone mentoring programme.

Employees ranging from chief executives to senior managers and IT people become a "trusted friend and role model in life" to a student of the same gender. Those who take part make a twoyear commitment and are matched with a student of similar career goals or hobbies and interests.

"Each relationship is different, some get on really well, some are average and some drop out, " says Noonan, noting that only about one in seven fails to complete the programme.

She adds that as well as sharing career skills and workplace expertise with students, workers benefit from what she calls the dinner-party effect: "It makes them proud and it's a good thing to be able to say they do. And they enjoy putting something back into the community."