O’Briensbridge teenager, Saoirse Exton is included among the first ever recipients of a global talent programme to promote brilliant young minds worldwide.
Sixteen year old Saoirse is the only Irish recipient of the 100 young people selected from thousands of entries across the world for the inaugural Rise Programme, the anchor programme of a $1bn (€860m) pledge by Google billionaires Eric and Wendy Schmidt to support talented young people.
Rise is a program that finds brilliant people who need opportunity and supports them for life as they work to serve others. The program starts at ages 15–17 and offers a lifetime of benefits including scholarships, mentorship, access to career development opportunities, funding, and more as Global Winners work toward solving humanity’s most pressing problems. It is a partnership between the Rhodes Trust, which provides the prestigious international scholarship programme at Oxford University, and Schmidt Futures, founded by Mr Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, and Ms Schmidt, a philanthropist and investor.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, the climate activist remarked of her inclusion, “This means a lot for me. It means that I will become a member of an international network of passionate and dedicated young people from across the planet and I will have access to mentorships and trainings for the rest of my life”.
For her application, Saoirse had to answer questions on her experiences as an activist which included founding Fridays for Future Limerick. A project also had to be completed and for this, she decided “to feed into my passion on mythology and rewrite some of the myths. I rewrote some of them from the feminist perspective and others from a more comical perspective, but it was an interesting way to combine education and critical analysis of Ireland’s stories together”. The myth of Mal from Co Clare, Nessa and Mac Dá Thó’s pig were among those included.
“I’m very proud, but I also know that this opportunity could have been accessible to so many other talented young people I work with on a day to day basis. Obviously now that I’ve gone through the process I’ve shared everything with them, but I really want Irish youth to have more of a platform on a world stage,” Saoirse said of her selection as the only Irish representative in the programme.
Details on funding for future ventures are to be clarified with the Gaelcholaiste Luimnigh student hopeful of utilising it for different social projects.
