About This Project

Nine students from Bulgaria spent 10 days in Limerick visiting various educational institutions. They also experienced a rich cultural programme around it that the students saw a lot more than classrooms.

The RALF Partnership handled the arrangements on the ground. Local tutor Ashley ran the schedule and looked after the group’s hotel stay in Limerick. We build programmes like this for schools through our group study visits, and Limerick is one of the destinations where we can set them up.

The group finished with a certificate ceremony, and the last paperwork was signed off before they flew home.

What the Students Did

Day one was mostly about getting oriented. Ashley met the group in a meeting room in the city for icebreakers and a briefing on the week ahead, then took them on a tour of Limerick.

A full day at a Limerick university followed. The students walked the grounds, sat in on lectures from a Digital Culture and Communications course, and joined classes in the university’s language school. A lecture hall runs very differently from a classroom at home, and that difference was most of the interest.

They also visited a community school in County Limerick, where they could set daily school life next to their own. The Irish-language secondary school was a different proposition altogether: every subject, and every conversation in the corridor, happens in Irish.

Lough Gur gave everyone a break from school buildings. It’s an archaeological and folk heritage site in the county, and the group spent time there learning about the area’s past.

Later in the week they took a guided tour of a hydroelectric power station on the River Shannon. Then came a final meeting with their tutors and the certificates.

About IBD Partnership Group

We’ve been running international school visits and cultural exchange programmes since 2005, and more than 50,000 participants from across Europe have come through them. Host institution matching, accommodation, itinerary planning and someone on the ground when plans change: we look after all of it. You can see how other groups got on in our success stories, or work through eligibility and application routes in our Erasmus+ resources. If you’re a school looking to organise an international visit for your students, contact us today.