 around the North West for a Monday afternoon. Now the launch of Gradham, the new Irish business award scheme from Gloria Gale is later this month and the awards give businesses the opportunity to increase their use of Irish. The Irish Language Development Officer with Lienra at her Canon joins us on the line now and we're live streaming as well. Barbara, good afternoon and happy new year to you Barbara. Thank you very much, John. Same to you, Lienfou Wachadich. Now let's talk about these new awards or this awards scheme. How exactly, the average business who might maybe would like to improve their Irish a little bit anyhow, how can they avail of this or what's involved? Okay, so this is an award scheme that is really about developing the capacity of businesses in terms of using Irish. So they're not in competition with other businesses. It's simply challenges that they set themselves and they can achieve a bronze, a silver or a gold award across three different categories. So one of those is their signage. Another one is their marketing and branding and the third is their customer service. So they could decide in the first year that they'll go for a bronze award in just one category or they might decide to take on two or three categories and over a period of time they can build up from bronze to silver to gold. So it really is about building step by step and their support there to help them do it. And is there different criteria in each category and for each of the awards? How it works is that there is an outline. I'll be going around so in the next week or so with a handbook for any of the businesses that are interested. I can also email them that handbook but it outlines say in terms of signage what is required. And if say there are 20 points there that you could cover, if you've got 35% of those covered you can get a bronze award. If you could 55% of them you can get the silver award and if you've got 80% or more you can get the gold award. So it's working on the same aims over a period of time but the more that you fulfill the higher the award that you can get. So you're not even if you move from a bronze award to a silver award you're not just starting again with another whole project you're simply building on what you've already done. Is the aim here to remind us all not just businesses that this is our national language and we need to work with it and work at it in order to ensure that it survives? It's very much about that. I mean as they say, the life of a language is to speak it. And researched on by Forrest Nigelga found that people had great kind of positive energy for the idea of using more Irish and wanted to see more Irish in businesses. And so people get a buzz out of the fact that there is Irish around and it encourages them and for many people they're more inclined to go to somewhere where they can see Irish or they can use Irish. So it's very much part of our plan as a geltuk service town to increase the amount of Irish that is visible that is hard to increase the number of places that you could go in and know that you can do your business through Irish or at least that somebody will greet you in Irish. I mean you know the fact that legal day the butcher is putting up signage which is going to be bilingual outside the shop is really good. The fact that you could go into Sanjay and bliss there in the boutique there in the main street and Sanjay can speak to you in Irish. You know these are the things if you go into Holgren the signage there in the front of the cafe you know is in Irish and people like that and so it's to build on that positivity really to do that and to help people to see that Irish is very much a living everyday language. And with these awards it we're not suggesting a sea change here it's small changes that can then add up to make a make a big difference. Absolutely we're not saying to people listen you know you have to be fluent within six months that is not what we're chatting about but we're saying use the little bit that you have be prepared to you know to put it out there to say to people yeah we actually you know maybe we have two people in the business who can speak Irish or we'll put up signage in Irish or at least whenever you come in we'll say Gia Ditch or we'll say Gora Mayagos when you're you know when you've done whatever transactions you're doing that were prepared to use it so it's very much just taking those little steps and gradually building confidence because I think the big thing for most people is about confidence to use the language and this is about increasing that confidence. And it's amazing what Irish we might have you know talked away in our psyche that we have from when we were at school and might not in all my own case have used it very little since but it's amazing when you get a wee trigger and oh I know what that word means and the trigger could be something that the business introduces. Exactly exactly it can just be something very small I mean they talk about active and passive use of language so the active is that ability to you know to make conversation in the language to read the language. The passive is just as you say we might think oh I have no Irish at all and yet I can understand those phrases or I can understand a sign that's up there so I might not have the confidence to use it but it's there and I am amazed I mean every week I have people coming to me saying I want to learn Irish or I want to improve my Irish literally on a weekly basis there's great energy there and so it's to give people that opportunity the more they see it around them the more they hear it around them the more they think you know I'm going to give this a go and for many people it is just reawakening the Irish that's already there and then we have lots of people who've moved here who are very interested in the language you know or their kids are at school their kids are doing Irish and they want to do you know they want to be able to speak some Irish or people coming in from the geltacht areas and particularly I think for families to be able to show your kids look look there's a sign you can read that sign there's somebody who's speaking to you in Irish this is a living language and that is what is so important and it's something that the businesses can really be a part of and get involved with but they also get the benefit of people saying you know I'm going to go there because I know I can walk in there and speak the wee bit of Irish that I've got even if it's only a few words I know that I can do that so it's a win-win situation really make a good point of those coming in from geltacht areas are those maybe they're going to galescalls or whatever it is and learning Irish at a young age but then as they get older and become more aware it's important that Irish is still relevant and that you can walk into businesses where there's a little bit of Irish on the signage or on the advertising or somebody greets you in Irish and then and then they can go well you know that's you know that's really affirmation of you know why I'm continuing to do this that says and I would like to see this summer I would like to see businesses who are involved in this scheme saying you know we've some summer work going wouldn't it be great to get a few young people in who speak Irish so that we can increase the provision of Irish so that kids come through all the schools in the town not just college to Ali but all the schools that kids would say do you know it's worth me being fluent because I have more chance of getting a summer job and even if you think in terms of tourism in this town people love to hear Irish you know I encounter that on a regular basis people are just buzzing about the fact that either they're hearing more Irish around or they're getting that bit more confident about speaking it so if we can encourage young people to see the possibilities that are opened up to them because they will speak Irish because they're confident and they're prepared you know they're prepared to give it a go then that would be fabulous well I think of people you know visitors here and and they're coming from a country where English isn't say the first language widely spoken but maybe not the first language so they're coming here and English is the English is the language that they're using but I'm sure they're aware that Irish is our first language but unless they go to the gilded up they mightn't be aware of that so it's great to go into a town like letter Kenny and indeed you know there's all the other towns that are not in the gilded up around only go and see a wee bit of Irish or hear a wee bit of Irish. Oh absolutely absolutely there's a real cultural richness there and sometimes it takes people from other countries to remind us of that of how important it is I mean before Christmas we had just kind of a taster Irish class over a couple of weeks for women who uh well it happened to be a group of women whose first language is Arabic but their kids are going to school here and they were talking about the importance of language for them and therefore their understanding of the importance of Irish for anybody growing up in Ireland and they want their kids to have good Irish so they are doing Irish classes with us and that's something that we're going to kind of set up more formally now from February because there are people from all over the world living here I mean with a woman from Brazil doing a 10 week Irish course with us absolutely loving it you know somebody else who'd come from Australia sometimes it takes people from outside to remind us what we've got and how important it is even just to our own our own sense of who we are there's great cultural richness there okay so uh there's a business listening in now and they'd like to get more information or get involved where can they where can they go well they can register through us they can come to me for more information as I say I'm waiting on the handbooks to arrive the uh my email address is olas so it's eolas at leonrallc.ie so lionrallc.ie and I'm sure you would put that up on the website for us I can be contacted by phone on 0860751663 and we're going to have a launch just something very simple online given the times that we're in on the 25th of January at eight o'clock and it'll be on Zoom but the idea is that it'll give people a you know the opportunity just to ask questions you know how does the scheme work what if they want to do this what if they have these opportunities just to pull that together and to make them aware of the resources that are there things like First and the Gaelgas scheme Takiak to grow their business support scheme that gives 5050 funding for things like packaging and signage and translation of websites and stuff like that so there are lots of resources there's good support and there are great opportunities for business okay brilliant well that official launch will be on the 25th and the best of luck with the uh with the scheme Gradham the the Irish business award screen Barbara thank you very much for uh taking some time to join us. 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