Bernie Henry

Cook, Sacred Heart College, Omagh

We had discussions on how you felt growing up, who were our role models, who encouraged us?

I been working here as a cook for 16 years and joined UNISON when I started. I’d never really thought about doing courses though I went along to a Making Women & Seen Heard day a few years ago which was very enjoyable. When I got the letter about the Building Confidence for Women course and saw it was in Omagh I was interested. My colleagues were also interested but wanted to know what it was about so I volunteered to go and find out. People didn’t realise that you could get time off to go.

I went along, not quite sure what to expect but it was very easy going. Mary, the tutor got everyone to introduce themselves. There were a few people from education, but more from the health service, which was good, because we didn’t just talk about education, it was much broader. We were in small groups, which made it easier to talk We covered a lot during the day, topics about the bigger picture of society and I suppose where we fitted in as women. We had discussions on how you felt growing up, who were our role models, who encouraged us? I have teenage children and it made me think about who influences them. I actually went home and had a discussion with them about it.

Generally the day created some space, it gave me time to think about things differently. Usually you go to work, go home, cook dinner, maybe watch tv, you don’t make time to think and reflect about things. The Building Confidence for Women course allowed everyone to speak, Mary was very good because she had time for people and made sure that everyone got involved.

I took from the day, the importance of listening to other people and thinking about other people’s attitudes. The course was great, the union needs to let people know that they can get paid time off to go to these courses. I went back to our kitchen and told my colleagues about the day and now there’s a queue for the next one. I’d like to see more courses running locally in Omagh or Enniskillen, a lot of people don’t like the idea of driving to Belfast and the buses are very early if you want to get there on time. I’d definitely like to do one of the weekend courses when the children are older.