A central heating and bathroom supplies business in Nimes, France, is the unlikely venue for a work placement for FAS trainee Samantha Keogh.
She and six other Irish students on the business and office technology course in the FAS Centre, Jervis Street, Dublin, are in France for three months honing their French language skills. For 20-year-old Samantha it's her first time to leave home - she was a little nervous and is still somewhat homesick but her host family is "really taking care" of her. So far, her French is holding up and she's "learning new stuff everyday".
Fellow student Barbara Bates is in the Maison de Tourisme in Nimes where she "still finds it strange listening to my voice in French. Not a lot of people speak English in Nimes, we're a novelty." Busy distributing leaflets and maps to tourists, Barbara says she is enjoying the challenge.
Unfortunately for her night life, the last buses leave the city centre at 7.30 p.m. so it's a case of "healthy living", she says.
For the past number of years, there has been close co-operation between the French training agency, AFPA, in Nimes, and the FAS training centre in Jervis Street. A number of exchange programmes - usually involving information technology and business training with a language - have taken place already.
Isabelle Nicot, of AFPA in Nimes, is in Dublin with 10 French trainees from a bi-lingual secretarial course. The exchange programme is funded jointly by FAS and the Leonardo da Vinci programme of the European Social Fund. Both sets of trainees have completed a four-week language course and they are now engaged on their eight-week in-company training.
While there is an unemployment rate of 11.8 per cent in France, prospects for the AFPA trainees are even more bleak in their own region of southern France where unemployment is closer to 18 per cent. Nicot says the idea of exchange programmes such as this one is to encourage the young unemployed to seek work abroad. The programme is quite successful, she says, and it is a big challenge for young people to live and work abroad; it's not a holiday.
AFPA trainee Frank Dernoncourt, who is doing his work experience with the Advisory Council for English Language Schools, has near-native English and is considering working and living in Ireland. Already, he has one job interview lined up. Frank says his host family in Churchtown are "very nice, very talkative".
On the social side, he and fellow students went to see Les Miserables, which they describe as "wonderful" and "georgeous". They also ventured further afield to Killarney, energetically cycling up the Gap of Dunloe.
Myriam Zegmati is working on the reception desk in the FAS centre, Jervis Street, and says "it is a real challenge" trying to understand the variety of Dublin accents. For Stephanie Devictor in USIT World the job so far has been a little repetitive but she is hoping things will improve once she gets settled in.
Stephanie and her colleague Chantal Franco, who is doing her work experience in the finance department of ICL, are both hoping to put down roots in Ireland.
AS to the value of the exchange programme for Irish trainees, Gaye Kelly, FAS course co-ordinator in Jervis Street, says "it's widely recognised that our language skills are not as developed as they could be . . . it is only by going to live in a country that you will fully acquire the language."
The Irish students all had at least ordinary-level Leaving Cert French and they had a French tutor for the 20 weeks of the course which preceded their sojourn in Nimes. Kelly says: "I would imagine that with their computer skills and their language fluency they will be very marketable." Noting the huge growth in the teleservices area she says they should have a choice of work.
