Young Social Innovators have been setting out their stalls, reports Louise Holden
The first of eight Speak Out forums began last week at Griffith College in Dublin, as 30 groups of Young Social Innovators put their projects on stage in front of 400 students, teachers, politicians, businesspeople and community leaders. They danced, sang, acted and mimed their issues in 30 breathtaking two-minute performances, highlighting some of the most important issues facing Irish communities.
Oatlands College in Mount Merrion, Co Dublin, sent two teams to the event. They chose two strong themes:
domestic abuse and integration. Using a star-studded collage as a backdrop, with each star representing a death from domestic abuse in the past 10 years, the students presented some chilling statistics, stressing all the while that domestic abuse is not just a woman's issue but a family problem. The second group took a comic approach to cultural integration in the classroom, charming the female members of the audience with their warmth and camaraderie.
Dominican College on Griffith Avenue in north Dublin also tackled foreign students' experiences. They started with a sketch about a Polish student. The girl is treated with suspicion by her Irish classmates, who interpret her shyness as rudeness, and when she fails to understand a request from her teacher she is met with impatience. The scene was then re-enacted from the point of view of an Irish student in Poland. A Polish student played the frazzled teacher yelling at the bewildered Dubliner as her Polish classmates tittered in the background.
The students of Coláiste Naomh Mhuire in Naas, Co Kildare, are raising money for a school in Zambia - and building personal relationships with their peers there. "They value their schooling so much even though they have so little. We don't always do the same here in Ireland," said one student. The members of a second team from the school, who have established a community sports day, used their two minutes to emphasise the imbalance between resources for male and female sporting activities. They put a week's newspaper coverage of female sports coverage in one bag and the cuttings of male sports coverage in another. When they dropped the bags on to the stage, one fluttered to the ground while the other landed with a thud.
They and the other groups that took part will continue their projects for the next few months; 200 will be chosen to showcase their work at the RDS in May.
Are you interested in social-affairs journalism? Transition Times invites young social-affairs reporters to write about the YSI Speak Out forums. What did you see there? Did a particular issue stand out for you? E-mail your reports to lholden@irish-times.ie and we'll publish our favourites in March. The forums (9.30am-1pm) are at Ardilaun Hotel, Galway (tomorrow), Regency Airport Hotel, Dublin (Feb 19), Clarion Hotel, Sligo (Feb 21), Woodlands Hotel, Waterford (Feb 26), Fairways Hotel, Dundalk (Feb 28), City Hall, Cork (Mar 4) and Red Cow Moran Hotel, Dublin (Mar 6). See www.youngsocialinnovators.ie
