The New Normal

In September 2021 we received a 3-year grant from the National Lottery Community Fund's 'Empowering Young People' programme to support our work across Northern Ireland. This has allowed us to work with over 35 schools and 500 young people in local cross-community clusters of schools.  Over a 5 session programme the young people meet, build relationships, agree on issues they care about and then develop a project or presentation on that issue which they take to the Northern Ireland Assembly to present to politicians. Some groups have also gone to the Irish Daíl.

In the process they discuss and research the issues that are important to them and learn how to present them - growing in their understanding and self-confidence. Young people tell us that they enjoy being able to discuss issues they might not get to discuss normally in school - and they like having a safe space to discuss even difficult and controversial issues and learning from the perspectives and experiences of others.

We have a skilled team of facilitators who help to deliver these programmes and to bring in guest speakers. They have extensive political knowledge and expertise and are a great resource and support for the groups.

Increasingly we are working to find new ways of supporting the longer term involvement of young people in addressing issues that are important to them. We also work closely with partners, including; Start 360, Diverse Youth NI, the Secondary Students Union and others to increase the impact of our work.

This project and funding have really helped us to grow our organisation and model over the past 3 years, and there have been several spin-off projects including our 'Young Evaluators' project, our 'Votes at 16' campaign and the 'Better Peace Podcast' series.

Read Professor Tony Gallagher's report on the project to see the impact we are having.