DUBLIN, Ireland - A national initiative called "Hireland" was launched Jan. 16 to encourage the creation of 5,000 new jobs for Ireland's skilled unemployed workforce in the first half of the year.

Hireland is a volunteer, not-for-profit group that came about in February 2011 after a kitchen table conversation between friends who had lost mutual friends to emigration because of the lack of jobs in Ireland.

At the table was Lucy Masterson, a communications professor at Champlain College's Dublin campus. When she brought about the idea of Hireland to her class, the initiative took off. Since then, it has grown to include Champlain College students who studied abroad in Dublin during the spring or fall of 2011, as well as a growing roster of people from the local business, marketing and media community, all of whom have given their time and skills for free.

Eighteen Champlain College students, along with Masterson, helped brainstorm the initial plan to tackle unemployment. The concept is to inject positive thinking about solutions to the problem rather than dwelling on the enormity of the unemployment numbers in Ireland. The simple goal is to convince small and large businesses in Ireland to pledge to hire at least one unemployed person this year. In the first four days, 680 jobs were pledged on the website.

In tandem with the Jan. 16 launch, Hireland organizers issued a new research study showing that just over half of small and medium enterprises surveyed plan to hire one or more new employees this year. Half of all new jobs will be full time, three in ten will be mostly part time, and the balance will be a mixture of full time and part time jobs. The research also revealed that 43 percent remain undecided about their recruitment plans.

"The findings of the research are positive, but it is clear that there are many business owners out there who have been toying with the notion of taking on additional staff, but don't feel confident enough to do so," said Gerard O'Neill, chairman of Amárach Research and co-founder of Hireland.

"Hireland's message is very clear. If you're a business owner, pledge a job on www.hireland.ie. A sure way of future proofing your business is to hire more people. By recruiting more people into the business, a company will experience immediate and direct benefits," he explains in a video on the Hireland website.

News of the project was reported in both of Ireland's top newspapers including the Irish Times and in other major media outlets.

Jordan Wheeler, now a senior studying event management at Champlain, was studying abroad in Dublin last spring when the idea surfaced. The group wasn't always gung-ho about the scope of the project: "‘How are we supposed to do this? We're 20 American students; how were we supposed to help the entire country of Ireland?' We were overwhelmed," she recalled recently. "We'd go into class and have nothing done. Lucy was so upset with us, gave us a figurative ‘slap in the face,' and told us she was disappointed. She supported our idea because she had faith that we could really do it. From that moment on, we were inspired. We set up the Facebook page and watched it grow from there. We can and did do something about it. And then, on its own, the idea spread to the United States through social media."

Masterson gave Champlain students a goal to get 1,000 likes on the Hireland Facebook page by Apr. 1, 2011. Once they surpassed that mark, the movement was off and running.

Within two weeks of that deadline, the project started to attract broader attention and got its first media mention Apr.11, 2011 on TV3's Ireland AM by Tour America chief, Mary McKenna.

A few days later, the Hireland team finished filming a promotional video, "Hireland: Our Story," with the help of a well-known local filmmaker, Richard Kendrick, who donated his time and equipment to help the organization.

Once Hireland was established on social media sites last spring, the mission spread to other colleges and universities in the United States. When American marketing expert and international bestselling author Stanley Rapp heard about Hireland, he met with Champlain Business student Hannah Long ‘ 12 over the summer to brainstorm developing a joint initiative here in the United States.

Since then, Rapp developed UhireUS, which was announced at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in September 2011. The U.S. group launched its website (www.uhireus.org/) in December and hopes to create one million jobs in the United States in 2012.

The idea is to encourage firms with more than 100 employees to hire one more person for every 100 now employed, and for the 2 million companies with fewer than 100 employees to add one more job. The alternative, Rapp says, is that "We're looking at a lost generation. The risk of not doing it is so much greater [than hiring one more employee]."

Champlain students' efforts may have also helped fuel a recent trend of Irish business people banding together to support one another by using social media, especially the Twitter hash tag #SMEcommunity. This trend, separate from Hireland, is now helping to promote Hireland on Twitter as an organization that could improve the economic crisis in Ireland.

A survey carried out by County Enterprise Board Central Coordination Unite of Enterprise Ireland has found that in the last quarter of this year, 5% of small businesses have improved their outlook on the overall business environment in Ireland. Although small in the grand scheme of the problem, it is still good news for Ireland's economic outlook. Irish media is also supporting the campaign with donated advertising and public relations services.

Although she is happy to be home, Wheeler said, "I do hope that it continues to make progress because as a small group of college students from Vermont, we made a huge step just while we were abroad in Ireland for a few months. I think it's a really good concept and could make a world of difference if it keeps going."

For more information on Hireland's mission, current endeavors, and economy updates visit their website at http://www.hireland.ie/

The Champlain College students who founded and created Hireland in the spring of 2011 are:

Hannah Long '12 Business from Huntington, MA
Lauren Swanson '12 Public Relations
Jordan Wheeler '12 Event Management from Lyndonville, VT
Genevieve Kozlowski '12 Communications from Hartford, VT
Andrew Bruhns '12 Small Business Management
Allyson Locke '12 Marketing from Scotland, CT
Patrick Danylik '12 Hospitality Management from Arlington, MA
Jesse Yushkevich ‘12
Laura Cogswell ‘12
Amy Lieblein '12 Sudbury, MA
Amber Wood '12 Psychology from Danby, VT
Sam Maslak ‘12
Devin Campbell ‘12 from East Longmeadow, MA
Devon McGarry '12 Communications from Westford, MA
Sarah Kendall '12 Business from Windsor, VT
Ross Ransom ‘12
Katherine Beers '12 from Bangor, ME
Christian Pickard ‘12 Business from Bemus Point, NY

Champlain students from the Fall 2011 study abroad class include:

Taylor Barrera
Kylie Dryzga
Quillan George
Brittany Hollman
Andrea Holt (Emerson College student)
Lindsay Keysar
John Lau
Thomas Lyga
Kelly Pratt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=19yW-EnGZzM

Read the Champlain College Dublin blog about Hireland.

http://champlainabroaddublin.blogspot.com/2011/04/hireland-its-all-about-action.html

Posted Jan. 17: Dr. Stephen Robinson, Director and Associate Professor, Champlain College Dublin sent this email today:

Hireland and Champlain College Dublin are delighted to announce the launch of Hireland.ie, a job creation scheme in Ireland developed primarily by Lucy Masterson (Dublin MKT 340 instructor).

Much of the groundwork for this non-profit non-governmental scheme was done by Champlain College Dublin students in Lucy's class in the spring and fall of 2011.

Hireland.ie launched yesterday (Jan. 16, 2012) and already has received press coverage by the Irish Times and the Irish Independent, two of Ireland's largest newspapers.  Note that both of the articles include mention of the Champlain College connection (see web links below).  The launch also includes radio, TV, and newspaper ads, with 500,000 Euro in advertising costs donated by the Irish media.

For more information please visit www.hireland.ie or read the articles linked below.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/new-website-aims-to-have-5000-job-pledges-by-june-2990213.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0117/1224310362750.html