Hope & Ambition Phase 1

Outreach

By participating in the Hope & Ambition project, we intended to build a network of young people seeking international protection. We proposed that these young people would come from the various reception and Direct Provision centres in and around Dublin. Despite the closure of two of the main Direct Provision centres in Dublin City during the implementation of this project, we have successfully built a strong network of young people and currently have a very active youth group of approximately 45 young people. We are conducting in-person outreach sessions in Balseskin Reception Centre and we have made links with organisations working in Balseskin and other centres, who regularly refer young people to our youth work service.

Engagement

We proposed to run one or two youth led projects per year. Over the course of Hope & Ambition, we have run the following projects: Mind Yourself (mental health project, five young people participated), Speak Up! (online spoken word project, in partnership with Creativity and Change, ten young people participated); Just Us: Sharing Our Stories (online performance arts project in partnership with Creativity and Change, 14 young people participated); Just World (online spoken word project in partnership with Creativity and Change, approximately 25 young people attended each monthly workshop and poetry slam); Move Your Mood (wellbeing project, blended approach, 14 young people participated); Connections (performance arts project, blended approach, 25 young people participated ) and an online photography project (17 young people participated).

Collaboration

We have worked hard to partner and collaborate with other organisations, youth workers, arts practitioners and facilitators. We have built relationships and worked with Jigsaw, Creativity & Change, National Youth Council of Ireland, Youth Work Ireland, Jesuit Refugee Service, the Balseskin Health Team, Tusla Separated Children’s Social Work Team and, more recently, Rua Red - a fellow Hope & Ambition organisation.

Youth empowerment

Empowerment is a difficult outcome to measure. Despite this, we are confident that our youth work over the last three years has contributed to young people feeling more empowered, more informed and better able to make decisions and advocate for themselves. Some young people’s involvement in our youth work has come to a natural end, as they move on with their lives. While we miss working with them, the fact that they feel they no longer need our services is a positive development in their lives. We also support several young people, who started out as participants in our youth projects and are now part of a group of youth leaders, about to embark on a programme of training and project implementation alongside us.

Online projects

Like many, we moved our work online during the covid-19 pandemic. This was not without challenges, but a major advantage of this approach was that it allowed our projects to be more accessible to young people (notwithstanding the issues around access to the internet). During the covid lockdowns, we provided several online creative arts projects for young people, many of whom were living in Direct Provision and extremely isolated. These online projects were really successful and provided young people with a place to connect, express themselves and learn new things. In order to navigate the constantly changing covid-19 guidelines, last summer we adopted a blended approach to our work. This enabled us to do in-person work out of doors mixed with online elements. Moving forward, we are keeping elements of this blended approach, with online engagement mixed with in-person group work and one-to-ones. This approach works very well for the young people and for us also.

Making connections

Through our participation in the CEOs and Practitioners Clubs, we have established close connections with two other organisations involved in Hope & Ambition: Rua Red and Glencree. We have just started a photography project for a group of 15 young people which is being led by a photographer in residence at Rua Red and they are providing us with the workshop venue. We have also been able to refer one young person to Glencree’s women’s group in Clondalkin. The covid-19 pandemic really impacted how much we could partner with and benefit from partner organisations. In addition, it takes time to build relationships, especially with organisations that are working in different fields. We hope that we will be able to build on these connections in the future.