Hot Fuzz tops in local youth awards competition

There was high excitement at the Fingal Civic Offices in Blanchardstown last week as sixteen youth groups competed for the fourth annual Active in Blanchardstown Community (ABC) awards. The scheme encourages young people to become aware of their community and take action to improve it by undertaking projects under various categories.

There was widespread agreement among the large crowd that regular participants, the Hot Fuzz Alps Group, were deserving winners of the overall prize.

The group provides opportunities for young people with learning difficulties to have fun, to have a voice and to play an active role in the community. They realised early on that they could have the best group in the world but if nobody knew about it, it would be ultimately self-defeating.

They therefore set about the task of publicising their activities by contacting local media outlets and doing numerous interviews, all of which were scrupulously documented. They worked together in designing a poster and the group then put the posters up in schools, shops and local centres. As a result, awareness of the group in the community has increased significantly.

The two runners up were the 13+ Foróige Group and the Mulhuddart Photography Group. 13+ Foróige turned their attentions to the elderly in the community, holding a meal and bingo evening and thus helping to bridge the generation gap.

The Mulhuddart Photography group had the rather grandiose aim of projecting positive images of Mulhuddart around the world and in this, they too achieved success. Not only did they get their project up on Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) but they also created a blog to accompany it (http://mcpyblog.blogspot.com).

A special award for effort was made to the Corduff Community Youth Project graffiti club. Their project, which is ongoing, involves trying to provide a more youth friendly atmosphere around the centre through ‘graffiti art’. With the support of Corduff Sports Centre, the work has started through sketching and painting on containers and canvas.

Performing at the awards was the nationally-acclaimed Blanchardstown Brass Band, while local dance group “The Usual Suspects” gave a master class in hip hop.

“This is the fourth year of the ABC awards developed by Blanchardstown Youth Service,” said BYS’s Catriona Freir. “With the largest attendance at the event yet, the audience agreed that it was the best awards so far. All the clubs and groups have already indicated that they are very eager to get involved next year.”

The ABC Awards are part of the Permanent TSB Foróige Youth Citizenship Programme.

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