About us!
"At the heart of the Young Social Innovators programme is the development of active, creative citizens. And it is active, creative citizens who will lead the transformation of Ireland. As President of Ireland I pay tribute to each one of you that responded so positively to the invitation to stretch and strengthen your leadership potential by becoming involved with this initiative." - Michael D Higgins
Guest Speaker Francis Doherty - 15/11/17
This year our YSI group in school have decided to tackle the problem of homelessness in our society as it's becoming a big issue. To help raise awareness and give us a little more insight into the troubles of homelessness, we had a speaker from Peter McVerry Trust come in and talk to us. Frances Doherty, who works with the charity, was kind enough to come in and give us a bit of his time to talk about homelessness.
He started off by telling us a little bit about what the charity do for the homeless and how they go about tackling the issue. He then gave us some facts and statistics on the homeless crisis going on in Ireland. After telling us everything we needed to know, we then asked Frances some questions we had prepared before hand. He was very informative in his answers and even gave us some suggestions on what practical things we, as a group, could do to tackle the issue of homelessness in our local areas. |
Speak Outs!
In January, our YSI team will go to the RDS to attend a 'Speak Out' . Here is a link to all the information about the event.
https://www.youngsocialinnovators.ie/speak-out-awards
https://www.youngsocialinnovators.ie/speak-out-awards
Dignity Bags :)
As we are dealing with homelessness for our YSI project, we thought it would be best to use the aspect of innovation and create something for the people we are helping. The 4th year YSI class came up with the idea of Dignity Bags. The concept is in the name. Our aim was to give people who were sleeping rough, bags full of essentials that is designed to give them a sense of dignity. The items within the bags were basic things such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, water, snacks, warm clothes such as hats and scarves, shampoo and wipes. These things don't have a huge impact on us but will give a sense of respectability to those who can't afford them. We asked our year group to help us in creating these bags and they were more than happy to oblige. The TY class of 2018 packed over 70 hampers that day and they were later presented to the Tiglin Community who were thrilled by the effort we put in. We would be happy to do something like this again for any community who allow us to help them.
Carol singing - 21/ 12/ 17
On the 21st of December, the YSI group along with some other volunteers from TY went to St. Stephen’s Green shopping centre to do carol singing for two hours to raise money for the Peter McVerry trust for homelessness this Christmas.