Claudine Murphyof Mount Anville Secondary School has helped to set up a group that campaigns for children's health.

As part of our Young Social Innovators project, we have teamed up with students at Rathdown School, in Glenageary,

Co Dublin, to set up Students Unite for Children's Health. The organisation will focus on supporting charities around the world that aim to improve young people's health. We are also publishing a book about the lives of teenagers in Ireland. It will include essays, short stories, poems and photographs from young people all over the country.

Young Social Innovators' Speak Out forum was an event that all 24 students in our group had been preparing for since the beginning of the school year. Each school was allocated two minutes in which it could show all the other schools what it was hoping to achieve.

On January 29th more than 400 students from south Dublin were welcomed to Griffith College, where the event was being held. The Speak Out opened with inspiring speeches by

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, the businessman Bill Cullen, the Fianna Fáil TD Tom Kitt and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Paddy Burke, all of whom told us about how they were once young social innovators, too.

The schools were then called out in groups of three - and our project was called out first. I introduced Students Unite for Children's Health with a speech about its aims and what we are doing. Our group performed a play depicting scenes from the lives of different groups of teenagers in Ireland. After we had performed, we enjoyed watching the performances of the other schools, about issues that Irish teenagers think are affecting us most, such as mental health, depression and eating disorders, fire safety, road safety, racism, prevention of cruelty to animals, environmental awareness and the different cliques in teenage society.

Each presentation was unique and enjoyable to watch. We really enjoyed getting our message across, trying to get other schools involved in our project and encouraging other students to submit entries to our book.

The 2008 Speak Out Forum was an unbelievable experience, and I learned so much about what other students are working to achieve.

The next big YSI event is its annual showcase, at the RDS in May, which should be excellent, given all the interesting projects that are under way.

My TY is looking for submissions from transition-year students. Just write 500 words about anything you like. It can be about something you are doing or planning to do in TY, or an opinion piece on a subject you feel strongly about. E-mail it with your name, school's name and contact telephone number to myty@irish-times.ie