Andrew Monaghan

Hey, my name is Andrew - I am an NCS Area Coordinator for Inspira in West Cumbria. I've worked for Inspira for a few years, first as a temporary NCS Summer Staff, which then led to me being given a full-time job working on the NCS programme.

The National Citizen Service programme is an inspiring personal development programme that enable me to make a difference to the lives of local young people.

When I’m not popping up in your assembly or coming to your school to do team building with you – you’ll find me in the office, organising our summer or autumn NCS programmes and making sure they’re full of top activities.

There is no other job that could compete with what I do right now. I have an amazing opportunity to help the next generation of young people grow and achieve the potential. The skills you learn and the friends you make on NCS don’t just last for four weeks – they stay with you for a lifetime.

My inspirational story

Before I became involved with NCS, I was studying Crime Scene Science at university. From the moment I was given a temporary summer job on NCS, everything changed. This was my first experience of working with young people. The group I had was full of individuals from different backgrounds who you would never think of putting together. Over the course of the next few weeks I saw their personalities develop dramatically and watched them learn some amazing new skills for life and work.

Seeing the difference that NCS made to these young people, made me realise what an amazing programme I was involved in, and from that point on I knew I wanted to do more in this line of work. Three years on, and I’ve seen so many young people come from not having anything to do - to ending up with a great apprenticeship or job because of the skills they’ve learned on NCS. Knowing I’ve played a part in this makes me feel proud of the work I do.

Words to live by

If "Plan A" didn't work. The Alphabet has 25 more letters. Stay Cool!


Like to work on NCS? Find out more... Follow Andrew on Twitter