Listening
to young people
One
of the more innovative youth projects last year was the publication
of the ‘Blakestown Youth say it as it is” survey report.
The report identified four main areas that needed to be addressed. These
were the need to listen to young people; the raising awareness and the
promotion of local sources of support; the development of youth facilities
and services and building on the existing community spirit in the area.
45 young people drawn from the three schools in the area covered by
the survey – Blakestown Community school, Scoil Mhuire NS and
St Phillip’s NS recently attended a day long seminar in Westmanstown
to take the conclusions of the report a stage further.
The participants at the seminar comprised sixth class pupils from the
two primary schools and Junior Cert students from the community school.
According to youth officer Liz Brady, “we hope to establish a
youth forum for the area out of today’s discussions.”
The young people were divided into smaller workshop groups to discuss
the different conclusions of the report. “In the workshop on facilities,
for instance, we gave them a million euro to spend and drew up a long
list. Then they discussed these ideas and refined the list to a more
realistic set of ideas,” said Liz.
Another interesting exercise focussed on who listens to young people.
“Basically they all said it was primarily their friends. They
felt that generally teachers and other statutory people were only there
to do a job,” she said.
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