More than 200 students take part in cross-border manufacturing programme

More than 200 young people took part in the Advanced Manufacturing Pathways Schools Project during 2023–24, bringing students from Belfast, Drogheda and Dundalk together to explore the skills and careers shaping modern manufacturing.

The cross-community and cross-border programme was delivered by Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre and Louth Meath Education and Training Board, with FIT acting as the education provider in Northern Ireland. The International Fund for Ireland supported the initiative through its Communities in Partnership Programme.

Eight schools participated. Students took part in project challenges and hands-on learning, while teachers were offered professional development in 3D printing, additive manufacturing, design thinking and introductory robotics, broadening their understanding of careers and technologies in advanced manufacturing.

The programme connected classroom learning with real-world technology through activity in schools, LMETB’s Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk and Queen’s University Belfast’s Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre.

For Portview and its partners, the project showed how skills programmes can deliver more than technical learning. They can also build relationships across communities and borders, broaden young people’s horizons and create clearer routes towards future education and employment.

Contemporary coverage / source: International Fund for Ireland – Collaborative schools project empowers students