In 2018 I published Blazing a Trail: Irish Women Who Changed the World, followed in 2019 by Dare to Dream: Irish People Who Took on the World (and Won!). Both books featured a host of remarkable Irish people, from Mary Robinson to Tom Crean. When The O’Brien Press approached me in 2021 to write a book about amazing young Irish people, I jumped at the chance. Be Inspired! Young Irish People Changing the World was born.
From the beginning, Be Inspired has been a team effort. Ideas for people to include in the book came from the whole gang at O’Brien Press, from my editor Helen Carr, two assistant editors, Princess Okonkwo and Aoife Harrison, designer Emma Byrne and many others. There has been so much cheerleading, support and advice along the way from so many people in the publishing house. Sadly, one of those supporters, the wonderful Michael O’Brien, is no longer with us, but his spirit lives on in all the books he has created and championed, including this one.
From the start we knew we wanted the book to reflect Ireland now, a different Ireland to the country many of us grew up in. A new Ireland that strives to support and celebrate children and young people of all colours, genders, heritages and abilities. A country for everyone.
We thought long and hard about who to include in the book. We wanted to make sure every child could seem themselves reflected on the page. We broke it down into four main areas — activism, sports, the arts, and science and business — and selected 28 young people to feature on the pages.
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I researched each entry carefully. I got the chance to interview many of the young people — on Zoom — and talked to them about their lives, their work (or sport, or passion) and their dreams for the future. The youngest people in the book are beekeeper Rían Somers and kindness campaigner Adam King, both born in 2014.
They were incredibly generous with their time, and I gained so much insight from their wise words. There are two things all the young people in Be Inspired have in common. First, they are all hard workers and passionate about the thing they love — whether that be climate justice, badminton, fashion, theatre or bees. Second, they have all had setbacks or made mistakes along the way. They have lost matches, crashed their mountain bikes, failed to be shortlisted for competitions or had to fight to be heard. But they overcame these setbacks and learned from their mistakes.
Flossie Donnelly was the very first person I interviewed for the book. I’d come across Flossie over the years as we’d judged a Trócaire art and writing competition together and I’d been on some of her beach cleans in Sandycove. We share a love of aquatic mammals. She told me how not one person showed up for her first beach clean, but she kept going regardless. She now has Flossie and the Beach Cleaners groups all over Ireland.
The second person I talked to was Fionn Ferreira, a young man I’ve met many times in person as his parents are friends of mine. Fionn won the 2019 Google Science Fair and became internationally famous in the science world. He invented a new way of removing microplastics from water using magnetic ferrofluid, a liquid that is attracted to a magnet. The idea for this came to him when he was walking on a beach near his home in west Cork and saw an oil spill on a rock that had attracted plastic particles. His brain went into overdrive, he started building his own science equipment (some of it from Lego!) and the rest is history.
His science communication skills are exceptional. Even I — no genius when it comes to science — was able to follow exactly what he was telling me about microplastics.
I’ve been blown away by the generosity and kindness shown by so many of those I interviewed. Róisín Ní Ríain and Nhat Nguyen took time out of their busy training schedules to talk to me about their lives, both dedicated to sport. Róisín is a Paralympic swimmer, the youngest athlete at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, and Nhat is an incredibly talented badminton player. It was a pleasure finding out about their training schedules, why they love their sport, their life outside swimming and badminton and what keeps them going.
When talking to the under-18s, I had their parent on the Zoom meeting too. This gave me the added bonus of meeting the parents of these remarkable young people. I had great fun meeting Rían’s dad, who pushes his son around the hurling pitch — good man!
I found education activist and proud Traveller, Ian McDonagh, thanks to Pavee Point and during our conversation he opened my eyes to many things I had taken for granted. He answered my questions with honesty and patience. I asked him if he was interested in fashion — he often wears a suit — saying my own children spend most of their time in tracksuits. He pointed out that he needed to look smart because of other people’s prejudices towards Travellers. That stopped me in my tracks. Of course! He wasn’t interested in fashion, he was interested in being taken seriously. I came away from talking to Ian determined to find out more about Traveller heritage.
The conversations were so informative and really made me think. I talked to Zainab Boladale from RTÉ about racism, and Eleanor Walsh about being an autistic actor. Eleanor said ‘I’d like to open doors for autistic, neurodivergent or disabled actors. I don’t have to be the best, but I can be one of the first.’
I hope I did all the young people featured in this book justice. I hope I captured their amazing spirit, energy and passion for life. I believe stepping into another person’s shoes and seeing the world through other people’s eyes is one of the great gifts that books can give us.
Working on Be Inspired, researching and talking to some of the young people within its pages, was a great privilege and an experience I will never forget.
The future of Ireland is in good hands!
Be Inspired! Young Irish People Changing the World by Sarah Webb and illustrated by Graham Corcoran is published by The O’Brien Press and is published on October 24th. A percentage of royalties from the book will be donated to Children’s Books Ireland.
