The Minister for Education and Science, Dr Woods, recently joined four young people from For≤ige, the National Youth Development Organisation, to unveil a programme designed to tackle the problem of early school leaving in Ireland.

Entitled Comhar - A For≤ige Schools Partnership, the programme is a manual for youth workers and teachers who aim to meet pupils' learning needs through best practice.

"Comhar" is an Irish word meaning mutual assistance, co-operation, combined work, and partnership. The word was traditionally used among communities in Ireland to denote neighbourly co-operation.

The programme is based on a pilot project carried out in three schools in the west of Ireland.

The project comprised several strands, some in-school and some out-of-school, as well as mentoring and parental involvement.

Comhar provides a firm and structured strategy for helping to keep potential early school leavers in school.

Benefits of the programme include: developing close links among young people within their peer group; providing a safe environment where young people can express and develop themselves at their own pace; providing activities - in the classroom and in the local community - where young people can develop new skills and build their self-confidence; providing adult mentors for young people who they can trust and in whom they can confide.

For≤ige's aims are to help young people in terms of both their own and society's development.

Further information is available from the organisation's website at www.foroige.ie