Mags GarganMags Gargan visits a showcase of student projects which are driving change in their local communities
"I think Young Social Innovators really gives young people a chance to do something. A lot of adults say young people are lazy and don’t care about issues, and if we do care about an issue we are not given a chance to do anything about it, so it is really great for us to have this opportunity to make a change,” said Molly O’Hart, from Largy College in Clones, Co. Monaghan.
Her schools’ project about the effects of homophobic bullying ‘LGBT – Let’s Get By Together’ won the Young Social Innovators (YSI) award last week, beating 60 other finalists chosen from over 400 entries from schools and youth organisations across the country.
The annual showcase and awards ceremony is one of the largest youth events in the country with over 5,000 young people attending at the City West Hotel on the outskirts of Dublin.
The event gives young people the opportunity to exhibit their project work through presentations, posters and exhibition stands as well as featuring lots of indoor and outdoor educational, social and interactive activities and events.
While the projects the Transition Year students are presenting have a serious message, the day is also great fun. Music from the open mic set is the first thing you hear on approach to the hotel as lots of teenagers in school uniforms or fancy dress climb down from buses carrying props and placards to fill three theatres inside the conference centre. Despite the rain young people also fill the green playing crazy golf, a giant chess set, a giant Connect Four and to compete in archery. Later RTÉ’s Mary Kennedy presents the award ceremony and the young audience is entertained by a performance from the band Original Rude Boys.
Change
YSI is a non-profit organisation co-founded in 2001 by Sr Stan Kennedy to encourage young people to grapple with difficult social issues, advocating reform and advancing change. The programme is open to 15 to 18 year olds and aims to empower young people and give them the skills to come up with solutions to social problems that will benefit their communities.
At the opening address of the showcase Sr Stan thanked the young people for questioning and for caring for society. “You’re asking some of the most important questions like, why? Why is it this way? That type of question is important to Ireland.”
During the year, thousands of young people have been working hard on projects to create awareness about social issues such as health, homelessness, domestic violence, LGBT rights, disability, safety and bullying.
Mercy College, Coolock entered the project ‘Fight for Females’ which investigated gender inequality in sport. “We aimed to raise awareness of how women don’t have equal opportunities in sport,” said Chloe Moore. “We got people from the Irish women’s rugby team to come in and talk to us. We had an inspiring women’s week, we had a cake sale to raise money for breast cancer and we introduced boxing into the school.”
Cian Heffernan from Presentation College, Carlow explains his school’s project ‘Read All About It’ aimed to promote literacy in their local area.
“The PISA education report said 17% of Irish teenagers don’t have the literacy skills to communicate properly. Also teenagers lose interest in reading and writing stories when they come into secondary school for some reason, so we wanted to investigate that,” he said.
“We gave books to the community and donated books to the homeless. We held a Spelling Bee for first years and had a Literacy Lie-in, which is an overnight sleepover in the school with reading, pizzas and movies, and we held different competitions in the school.”
A few days after the YSI showcase the group from Presentation Convent, Mitchelstown launched a book in Easons as a result of their project ‘Be Breast Aware’.
“We made a book called Mammy is Sick which explains to children what will happen if their mother has breast cancer,” said Kate O’Brien. “We divided up the book and each of us wrote part of it and got drawings from other students in the school.
“We also put up posters around the town to paint the town pink. The posters explain the different causes of breast cancer and how to prevent it.
“Through our research we found that men can get breast cancer too and we wanted to raise awareness of that as well because not many people know about it.”
Awareness
Ursuline Convent, Thurles came up with the project ‘112 Where are you?’ which raises awareness of the usefulness of road numbers in emergency situations.
“We are promoting the use of road numbers because a lot of people live out in rural areas and if you need to call an ambulance and say you live on the Ragg Road, locals would know where that is but up in Dublin they wouldn’t.
“If you know your road number the ambulance could be dispatched a lot quicker, and a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death in an emergency,” said Megan Sheedy.
“We raised money from local companies and the Lions Club and created cards for each household with their road numbers that they put on their fridge in case of an emergency.
“It was really good fun and we learned a lot as well. I never knew about road numbers before this. As a group we got to know each other better and we went out and did something for the community and to play our part.”
The awards were judged by independent panels from the education, youth, statutory and corporate sectors and when choosing the overall title award the judges looked for a project which excelled in innovative thinking, social impact as well as recognising a team which has the passion and support to continue to further develop their social innovation.
Largy College took the gold award for their project on homophobic bullying and discrimination. The Silver Award went to Cashel Community School for their project about concussion in sport and Schull Community College took the Bronze Award for their investigation into harmful chemicals found in cosmetics and food packaging.
As well as the overall awards, 25 other schools from across the country were named as category winners and received awards designed by John Rocha. The categories included Making Our World a Better Place for Young People; Making Our World One World; Relationships & Sexual Health Challenge; Making Our World Safer; Making Our Country More Inclusive & Poverty Free; Step Up Challenge; Making Our Community Better; Making Our World Healthier – Mental Health; Making Our World Healthier – Physical Health; Making Our World Greener.
Summing up the aim of the awards and the achievements of the winners, Sr Stan said that while it is hard for young people to access power in Ireland or even to know where to start, “many young people here today are politicised, they take their community and society seriously”.
“They want to contribute and are doing amazing and innovative things to help their communities. They bring to reality the type of society they want to live in and are an inspiration to us all,” she said.