On Tuesday the 20th of March, the YSI group in our school attended a YSI Speak Out in the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire. The Speak Out is a competition where YSI groups from many different schools go on stage for 2 minutes and talk about their YSI project. Our YSI project is called "Daoine gan Didéan" and it is about homelessness. We decided to create a 2 minute play about the issue of homelessness. We created posters which said positive and negative thoughts about homeless people. Our aim was to show that homeless people are still people and deserve to be treated equally to everyone else.
When we arrived at the hotel, we sat in the audience and watched some of the YSI groups from other schools, which included topics such as bullying, mental health and climate change. When it was our turn to go on stage, our play went smoothly and was a success. We then went out for lunch together and then headed back to the school. I think the Speak Out was a really well run event and I am glad I participated. It was a really good way to raise awareness about our project and I am thankful for the experience.
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On Tuesday the 19th of December, the Y.S.I committee in my school packed Dignity Bags for the homelessness organisation Tiglin. A dignity bag is simply a bag that is filled with necessities such as toothbrushes and toothpaste, sanitary products, shampoo, shower gel, razors, hats, scarves and water bottles etc. We put up posters around the school and informed each year group of which items they had to bring in. We ended up collecting loads of items and on the Tuesday we brought all of the items down to the hall in our school. We had loads of bags and put one of each item into each bag. The system we created worked really well and we ended up making almost 100 bags. A few days later the people from Tiglin came to collect the bags and we packed them all onto a bus for them to be delivered to the homeless. They were really grateful for our help and it was really rewarding to feel like we were making a difference.
Hamper Packing for SVP
On Tuesday the 19th of December, I took part in hamper packing for St Vincent de Paul. My year was split into 12 teams and each team was lead by two fifth year students. Every team had 20 hampers to pack. The supplies were laid out around the sports hall and we had a list of what each hamper needed to have inside. We filled the boxes with items such as biscuits, beans, cereal, peas, soup, sweets, ketchup, bacon and lots more. The hampers were then sealed and ready to be delivered to families. I think the hamper packing was a great exercise for teamwork as we all worked well together to fill all of the boxes. I also think it was really rewarding to be giving back to our community and helping out some families in need this Christmas. YSI
This year I am taking part in Y.S.I (Young Social Innovators) in school. I am doing it as part of my community work for my Gaisce Award. The topic our group has chosen is Homelessness. So far this year, we have set up a Y.S.I email address: [email protected]. We also organised a guest speaker from Peter McVerry Trust to come in and talk to us about the issue of homelessness. We have also created a Y.S.I notice board which is full of posters and facts about our topic. In the coming months we plan to achieve more in our Y.S.I group. We have organised a bake sale to raise money for homelessness for the 30th of November 2017. We will also have a stand in the St. Gerard's Christmas Bazaar on the 14th of December 2017 in order to raise more money. We are planning on helping to pack hampers for the homeless before Christmas, and in February we will hopefully take part in creating special "Dignity Bags" that are handed out to people sleeping rough. A group of us will also go carol singing in St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre to raise money for homeless charities. Lastly, in March 2018, we are planning to get involved in a Speak Out in the RDS, where we will get to voice our opinion on our topic and tell people what we have achieved. On Friday the 13th of October my school volunteered to bag pack at two different Dunnes Stores for the day to raise money for St Vincent de Paul. There were different time slots, and I volunteered from 12 until 2 in the Dunnes Stores in Cornelscourt.
Each student was assigned to a different till and we offered to help customers to pack their bags. It was surprisingly quite nerve wracking at the start because I was afraid of packing the bag wrong or breaking some of the food. However after a while I got used to it and was happy to help some of the customers. Most people were extremely nice and chatty and some were very generous with their donations. In total, we raised over €2,000 for St Vincent de Paul. The day was a great success and I really enjoyed being able to actively help out in my community. |
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