Starbucks Youth Action 2013

The Starbucks Youth Action programme inspires, empowers and supports young people in Dublin and Belfast to make a difference in their communities by applying to Starbucks Youth Action for seed funding of up to€1000 to get their projects off the ground.

Our Belfast groups are truly inspirational.

Congratulations to all the groups who made it to the final grant stage. We are more than impressed,this year our fourth year has been inspirational.

On Wednesday 1^st May the below groups pitched their ideas to a panel of stakeholders and the following groups received the grants. Well done everyone!

1.Clonard Outreach
The programme is based around interacting with the children and families of the Clonard area by providing a programme of fun activities for children in a safe environment

2.Cross Community Summer Camp- Glanworth
A cross community leadership camp between Catholics and Protestants in the area. A camping experience to Castlewellan Forest Park

3.Bear Grylls
Bear Grylls Experience 2. They will bring 15 young men into the Sperrin Mountains to camp and live off the land! It will take young people out of their comfort zone and place them in a situation where they will learn leadership, survival and mentoring skills

4.Willowfield- Girls on Tour
Taking girls from disadvantaged backgrounds away for the  weekend giving them the opportunity to talk about issues that effect them with particular emphasis on self esteem.

5.Holy Trinity
A Training programme for 15 young people to reach OCN Level 1 and 2 from Upper Springfield/Whiterock which is deemed to be the most deprived electoral ward in NI

Photos from Belfast below

 

Starbucks Youth Action 2013 is HERE!!

Starbucks Youth Action is back, and we want to support young people aged 16-24  who have ideas to make their community a better place.  The Starbucks Youth Action programme inspires, empowers and supports young people in Dublin and Belfast to make a difference in their communities by applying to Starbucks Youth Action for seed funding of up to €1000 to get their projects off the ground.

There are no limitations on what your idea could be. The most important thing is that the idea contributes to your community to make it a better place. To date we have had pigeon lofts, sports programmes, multi-cultural events and bake offs to name a few and we are excited to hear what your idea is!

This is the 4^th year of this project, which has seen nearly 200 young people bring ideas to life that made their community a better place to live.  All of our wonderful projects are the ones you can see featured in this blog we keep!

Now the deadline is fast approaching so if you have an idea, tell us about it! Go to http://www.iyf.ie/grants to download the application form and get it to us by March 4th!

Check out the flyer below!

We Are One

What a documentary!

SWICN (South West Inner City Network) Computer Clubhouse has sent us on the link to their short documentary!  SWICN was also a recipient of one of our Starbucks Youth Action Grant’s 2012, and they had big ideas!  Not only did they aim to plan and organize a Flash Mob, they also aimed to create a short documentary on the people living in Dublin 8.  We think they succeeded in their goals, check out their finished documentary  here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDMDRKpiYFE  (Just a tad bit late for the IFTA’s gang!)

The documentary is great and highlights the type of people living in the area, where they are from, how long they have lived, and the similarities they find.

What do you think?

 

This event is still the same but different name!

Here’s a quick update on one of our Starbuck’s Youth Action groups!  The project  ‘Same but Different’ has written to us recently to let us know that they have changed the name of the project to ‘We are One’, together they think this suits the project better, and we like it too!  The project is an event to celebrate multicultural Dublin 8 and the computer clubhouse there where the young people go after school.  The project aims to celebrate their clubhouse and their young people through a documentary, a flash mob, and a celebratory event!

Over the past few weeks the project have been working towards their celebratory event scheduled to take place on December 13th.   They have written a proposal to secure a venue at Core Church on Thomas street and have been speaking to T-shirt and sound system companies for the staging of the flash mob!

The project has also been researching how to make plaster moulds for a hand sculpture they will be exhibiting on the day of the event- looks really interesting!

We are One has assured us they will keep us updated on their progress so watch this space! In the mean time, check out some pictures of what they’ve been up to!

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Youth Aiding Youth

We heard from Aidan of the QURC recently to find out that they’re working on getting their first Youth Action programme up and running!  The student teams have been selected and they’ve found themselves 12 amazing volunteers who are all signed up and ready to go.  Over the next 2 weeks the programme will run training programmes to get all the members fully prepared.  The goal is to have the projects up and running within the first week of October!  And the main aim is to have 3 projects running before Christmas, and then one more in January!

The Queen’s University Red Cross aims to encourage young people to become more independent and aware of the world around them by engaging with youth directly.  That definitely sounded like something we wanted to be involved with! So, the group is one of our Starbucks Youth Action grant recipients as they put together and devised a 12 week project for young people aged 10-18 that would teach first aid, humanitarian education, and community action.

Looks like the QURC is going to have quite the busy schedule, and we cannot wait to hear how they get on!

Relax… Breaking the Cycle has this under control!

Take a few young people, put then in an old unused room, add some tools and hard work, and voilà!

One brand new relaxation room!

Our Starbucks Youth Action programme, Breaking the Cycle, set out with the goal to transform an unused room in a residential training centre for high risk teenagers in inner city Dublin into a relaxation space for young people.  The hope for the room was that it would become a space where young people would learn alternative ways to relax, as opposed to substance misuse and abuse. And from what we can tell- with the space they’ve created, these young people have found their alternative!

Take a look for yourself…

With calming lightening, a nice new sound system for music and listening to meditations, carpeted floors, and comfortable seating the lads started to use their new space by relaxing with facial masks and acupuncture! Michelle has assured us the young group are getting the most of the room and absolutely love it!
But it wasn’t all this laid back and relaxing

The room has taken A LOT of effort to put together, and due to some flooding there’s still a bit of work to do..

But check out some pictures of their work and progress

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If that’s the room still in progress… we can’t imagine the finished product! Everything looks great, and on a rainy Monday morning, we know one place we’d all rather be!

Save this date!

Breakin’ Grounds has sent us on their flyer- doesn’t it look amazing? They’ve done a great job getting this togehter, now its just count down time! If you’re in the area, save the date for September 29th, and if you’re not in the area– find a way to get there! This event looks too good to miss!

 

 

And ACTION!

Our Starbucks Youth Action programme, Same but Different, has started filming for their upcoming documentary.  The programme will be hosting an event to celebrate the multicultural community of Dublin 8 as well as the computer club house where the young people of the area go after school.  The celebration will include the documentary, a flash mob, and a celebratory event.

The group began shooting at the beginning of this month for the video.  The went all around Dublin 8, to places like the Liberty market and an Italian owned chipper to show the diversity of the area.  The group asked the residents and workers in the area a few questions about Ireland like,

‘Where are you from?’, ‘How long are you in the area?’, ‘Do you miss anything from your home country?’, and ‘What would you improve in this area?’

(We’re really excited to listen to what they had to say)

It proved to be a long day of filming to collect all the footage they needed, but the group really enjoyed meeting so many new people and getting to listen to the differing opinions on the area.  While walking around collecting the footage, the group handed out little invites about the event and information needed to get involved. Check it out–

 

For the next few weeks the group will be editing the footage using iMovie and they’ve started to arrange a dance teacher for the flash mob-

Hopefully they give us the inside scoop on where it will take place!! Can’t wait to see how it all comes together!

Camping like Bear

We’ve just received some great feedback from our Bear Grylls Survival weekend program! Eleanor and Barbara designed a program to teach survival skills, leadership and innovation through a weekend camping trip on Conai Island.  The main goal of the even was to take kids out of constant chaos into a worry free weekend with no hi-tech gadgets or luxuries for a real learning experience; and from the sounds of it- the weekend was quite a success!! The biggest challenge for the group was to find the perfect location to go camping at, they wanted somewhere that didn’t have too much life because the intention was to ‘Bear Grylls it’ and the group wanted to find a good fishing point.  After nearly 5 weeks of debating, they found the perfect place on Coni Island and the perfect campsite made for the perfect trip!  The highlight of the event had to be diving off the island cliffs into the crystal blue water– even the trainee’s worried about not being able to swim joined in and everybody had a laugh together!  A real laugh came when one of the kids jumped off the cliff and lost his boxers he couldn’t find them so he had to run up the mountain naked back to the campsite hopefully he was a quick runner!!! Another highlight was the fishing trip.  The group took fishing rods with them and one of the participants who had never fished before couldn’t seem to get a hang of casting the rod.  He kept catching the hook on rocks and other people, and eventually he even caught himself!  When he cast the rod the hook caught on the hood of his hoody and he couldn’t unhook himself so he instead had to stagger over with his hood pulled over his face shouting, “Someone get this off me!” (At least he can say he got the biggest catch of the day!)

The participants exclaimed that the weekend was, “Powerful craic”, asked “When can we do it again?”, and complained “I don’t wanna go home!” (That’s one complaint we love to hear!)  The trip was such a success that the group has a bundle more ideas- this is only the start for them!  On October 6th, 11 of the trainees will head to Cambodia to build a school and repair wells, and next year the group hopes to re-live the Bear Grylls experience with round 2 of the camping trip! We wish the trainnes off to Cambodia the best of luck and can’t wait to hear how they get on!

 

And we love Knockmitten!

Knockmitten Loves me, the Family Fun Day in Knockmitten turned out to be a great success (no surprise here!).  Carmel has sent us along a few pictures from the day and promises to send us more… check out what we have so far, and come back to check out some more later!!

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