We want to give everybody an opportunity to use their creativity to respond to social issues and contribute to building a fairer, more caring and equal society. Everything we have ever created has been designed with this purpose. To achieve this, we empower and support young people to realise their potential as social innovators, giving them the skills and confidence to tackle the social issues facing them, their communities and wider society. Social innovation learning builds wellbeing amongst young people and communities and helps build a more inclusive, empathetic, fair society.
This year our chosen topic for YSI is raising awareness for homelessness. This was chosen after a very long time but since three homeless folks in our local area have passed away, we felt it was right to choose this as it affects our community at the moment. We chose to call our project the Irish world for homelessness, “Daoine Gan Dídean”. As a group we hope to do our best to raise awareness for our chosen issue and help those affected by the issue. We hope to do this by having a cake sale to raise money aswell as carol singing for the homeless in St. Stephen’s Green.
It is a voluntary effort therefore a contract had to be signed.
The members of the YSI were happy to have a talk with Mr. Francis Doherty from the Peter Mcverry Trust. He talked to us about many issues ranging from what the trust does to his solutions to the homeless crisis in this country. I found it appalling to hear some of the statistics he said. I was completely unaware of the amount of vacant homes in Dublin that were not being used by anyone that could easily be renovated into new social homes. Overall I found it to be an informative talk.