Follow the finalists of Cork’s Got Talent at the Venue Bar, Ballintemple, Cork on 4 September at 8.30pm. Fantastic spot prizes will be up for grabs and there will also be a special guest appearance from a former ‘You’re a Star’ contestant. Tickets are priced at €5 and all the proceeds will go to Cork Simon Community.

‘Leadership Capability in the Senior Irish Civil Service’ and ‘Productivity in the hotel industry – the New Zealand experience’ are just two topics that will be discussed at a major business conference being held at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) next week.
Management professionals and academics will gather at CIT for the 13th Irish Academy of Management Conference, hosted by CIT’s School of Business on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 September.

A new group in Cork has been launched and it is designed to help women feel better about themselves and the decisions they make in their everyday lives. ‘Girls for Themselves’ is all about empowering women. It inspires self confidence achieved by using self esteem and image boosting techniques. The group meets on a monthly basis and is facilitated by a group leader who is a highly experienced mentor and coach.

Fundraisers will take to their spinning bikes on Sunday 5 September when a spinathon will take place at Leisure World in Churchfield to raise funds for the Daniel Collins Fund.Little Daniel from Gurranabraher was born on June 24 at Cork University Maternity Hospital with a life-threatening respiratory virus.

Did you know that Ireland has 71 per cent water fluoridation? Most countries in Europe including all of Great Britain, France and Germany have no water fluoridation at all. None.The reasons given for these countries not treating their water with fluoride include “toxicologically and physiologically debatable” reasons according to the Czech Republic, while France does not have fluoridated water because “of ethical as well as medical considerations”.

The Cork Counselling Service has been awarded a year of free electricity this week after it was one of 15 local community groups to be awarded funds from Bord Gais Energy. Under the Community Energy Fund, the centre will have €10,000 of its energy costs paid for. A €100,000 fund was set up to celebrate the energy company’s one-millionth customer earlier this year.

A detailed project on the docklands in Cork is seeking oral submissions. ‘Working Life in the Cork Docklands from the 1950s to the 1980s – An Oral History’ by Adrian Roche is a project, partly funded by a grant from the Heritage Council, which will be completed in November. Oral history is the process of collecting and recording the experiences and memories of people or groups.

Self-defence classes are kicking off in Cork this week, as the Combat 365 Defence Training Academy is enrolling. According to trainers of the self-protection and self-defence system, which was formed in 2005, violent crime is on the increase and street attacks are almost a daily fact of life. The Lead Instructor is registered with the British and World Combat Association and is also on their register of Self Protection Instructors.

A group of former St. Aloysius students, who were the first southern school to visit Stormont in the 1960s, are hoping to find all 120 pupils from its class of ’71 for its 40^th reunion. The remaining Sharman Crawford Street school pupils are being invited to a meeting at the Bodega in Cork on Saturday 4 September, in which the group are aiming to find all four classes and 120 people.

A group of resilient rebels have decided to get fit and raise cash for the Baby Jakub Fund, which has been helping the Novak family from Millstreet with medical expenses since the baby was born last year. Rose O’Neill, Sinéad Bullman, Owen Kelly and Tomás Jacob will all break a sweat when they undertake the gruelling nine-week programme at the Cork Rebel Boot Camp. All four are now looking for sponsorship as they prepare to shed the pounds from September.