The Young Social Innovators programme has given voice to 5,000 teenagers and their concerns, writes Erin Golden
From anorexia to autism, young people are increasingly aware of the challenges and problems facing their communities and the world at large - and they are no longer waiting around for adults to come up with the solutions.
Since the start of the school year, more than 5,000 teenagers around the State have dedicated hundreds of hours to their friends and neighbours through projects created for the Young Social Innovators (YSI) programme, which encourages people aged 15-18 to collaborate on projects that raise public awareness and lend assistance to people and causes in need.
According to YSI chief Rachel Collier, who founded the programme in 2001 along with Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, the students don't shy away from tough topics. "They deal with real issues, subjects that adults would find difficult to take on," she says. "This year we have a lot of projects related to mental health and suicide, and they take on other things like making their town a fair-trade town, which is no easy task. They really do take on big adult issues in the real world," she says.
For the 24 students in Frances O'Riordan's class at Coláiste na Toirbhirte in Bandon, Co Cork, identifying a topic for this year's YSI programme was as easy as a short walk to another classroom within their own school. One year earlier, the school had added a specially designed autism centre for use by twin sisters Anna and Laura Murphy, who are both autistic. And while the two girls were thriving with the additional academic help, their peers felt that something was missing.
"We brainstormed ideas for the project and came up with CAAC - Caring Always for Autistic Children," says Erin Quinn (16), the project's chairwoman.
"The aim of the project was to integrate the autistic students with the mainstream students, so we go in during class time and talk and play games and have a bit of fun with them."
In addition to the two or three weekly visits with Anna and Laura, the students took it upon themselves to learn as much as they could about autism and to share their new found expertise with their community.
"We did loads of research and carried out surveys in other schools and put together a leaflet," Quinn says.
"We found from our research that early intervention is best, so we sent the leaflets around to pharmacies where young mothers can pick them up and find information about autism. We also brought in guest speakers and made presentations to the other classes, because we want them to carry on the project."
In other schools, students studied issues ranging from young men's health and testicular cancer to depression. At the Loreto Secondary School in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, 12 students used wire, wood and storytelling to confront a growing trend of eating disorders and body image issues in a project called The Size Zero Epidemic.
"There's so much out there now with celebrities and everything and trying to be a size zero, so we wanted to show that it's not the only way to look," says Aoife Dunphy (16), one of the students who created the project.
"We wanted to portray it to the younger people in our community to stop it before it starts, and to do it in a way that would catch their attention. We came up with a puppet show, which is also a metaphor because anorexia controls the life of its victims like a puppeteer controls a puppet."
With the help of local artist Des Dillon, the class created a travelling puppet show called Mary in the Mirror, the story of a young woman who struggles with mixed feelings about her appearance but eventually finds help.
The group also produced calendars with positive quotes about women and self-image which they sold to raise money for awareness efforts and eating disorder charities.
The students' teachers, Mary Campell and Josephine Farrer, say the process of creating and launching such an ambitious project help the participants to confront their own issues and boost self-confidence. "It's a really empowering process for them," Farrer says. "The girls themselves have had to acquire new skills and make links, take ownership of things and learn to deal with new people. They just develop in a really phenomenal way - it's a really good maturing process."
The participants in all of the 365 projects are invited to exhibit their work in the Young Social Innovators Showcase which will be held tomorrow and Thursday in the RDS, Dublin. The 193 projects signed up to exhibit will also be judged and the top selections will receive special awards.
Mary Roche, an adolescent health project manager with the Health Service Executive (HSE), will be serving as one of the judges. She says the exhibition and the projects provide an ideal platform for young people to reach out to others and to help effect change in a positive way.
"It's about young people taking control, being involved in finding ways to make sense of the world for themselves, having a voice," she says. "It's amazing how lucid that voice is when it's allowed to be heard."