(Guest Post by Hugh Doyle, outgoing Project Manager for the Youth Participation Project (YPP) in Donegal)
In the early days of YPP, from our base in a small office in Drumany Old Church in Letterkenny, Bill Vaughan and I, ably supported by Project Coordinator Gerry McGeady, set about our task of “Capacity-Building for participation the population of young people and service providers in the North West” or so the Action Plan said anyway! We first set about developing reference groups of young people all across the North West. In this way young people looked at specific themes (mainly Alcohol and Drugs, Mental Health and Sexual Health) and presented their ideas to service planners, managers and providers at our first conference, Right to Be, in the Everglades Hotel in Derry on the 2nd December 2005. The planners and managers were highly impressed with the insight and knowledge those young people showed that day and why wouldn’t young people show Continue Reading »
I wrote a few weeks ago about the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi and that we had offered to sponsor some of the children so that they can go to School. Well I’m very pleased that today we’ve agreed to support 10 children to go to school including covering the costs of their school uniforms, text books and extra tuition.
I’ll post updates on how this progresses later in the year.
The cost for each childs school fee is an average of £21 a year! Not a lot to us but if you consider that the average wage in Malawi is about 80 pence a day (£24 month) then relatively thats a very large amount and for children without parents there may be nobody to provide any kind of financial assistance.
We’d like to support more children in the future so we’re on the look out for any kinds of donations towards this. All money donated will be used directly for the work of the Grace Project - if you’d like to make a donation send us an email to info@yomo.co.uk
Something that really affects you when you’re out there is that you eat in a restaurant - a meal that is very average by our standards - but you think all of the time that the food you leave is much more than the children you’ve been with will get to eat. So the idea of the group is to give up something for a short period of time - it can be a luxury - chocolate, expensive drinks & so on, but give it up for a short time and put the money you would have spent to one side and then send it over to us and we’ll make sure its used to support the children involved in the Grace project. Its a small gesture but I can’t emphasise enough that its something that will make a very big difference - its a very simple way of investing in people to help themselves. If you’re not on facebook you can still do it anyway!
Practical Ideas for Youth Participation was an event organised by YoMo in October 2007. If you would like help to organise your own events, a quote for bespoke training or to discuss potential partnership work please contact us at info@yomo.co.uk
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.
The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. The four core principles of the Convention are:
non-discrimination
devotion to the best interests of the child
the right to life, survival and development
and respect for the views of the child.
By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights and they have agreed to hold themselves Continue Reading »
I wrote a few weeks ago about the 
All Info taken from UNICEF