Taking it to Brussels

Students from a number of schools visited the European Parliament in Brussels where they took their Dev Ed skills to the coalface. Transition Timesspoke to participants from St Mary's CBS in Carlow

'We did our Dev Ed course in TY," explains Fintan Phelan (16), now in sixth year. "Many students wanted to continue their involvement with development issues so we set up the Peace and Justice committee here in the school. It's for students in fifth and sixth year who help raise funds and awareness for different programmes, like the Immersion Project where 10 students went to Calcutta for three weeks to work in an orphanage and a hospital. Having seen the poverty first-hand, the students could then come back and give talks around schools about their experiences.

"Two of us just returned from Brussels last week. We've been preparing for the trip for almost a year now. We had to go to workshops in Dublin every three weeks to learn about the focus of our campaign while there - to go to the European Parliament and lobby MEPs in relation to their commitments to the UN Millennium Development Goals."

"These are eight goals aimed at improving the standard of life in the developing world, signed by 189 countries at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000," explains Gavin Coleman (17). "They were promised on the public's behalf to be fulfilled by 2015. We went to Brussels to remind politicians that they made this promise on our behalf.

"So, while there, we sat in on a European Parliament hearing on child labour. Our experience with the parliament was that they seemed to be calling for a lot of studies into issues instead of taking action. They all wanted to do something about the issue but no action was being taken. Most of the debate was directed towards a representative from the European commission who listed off where money was being given. But it seemed like there was no real evaluation of whether or not the funding being provided was effective.

"The will is there among many politicians," argues Gavin. "But in some cases aid money is being wasted. Some efforts simply aren't as focussed as they could be."

"We also met with Mairéad McGuinness MEP and Proinsias De Rossa MEP," explains Fintan. "It was interesting to speak with two different politicians about their own areas of expertise. McGuinness focussed on the importance of agriculture and its role in combating inequality between developed and developing countries. De Rossa, on the other hand, focused on the Israel/Palestine conflict and how Israel is blocking Palestine from the rest of the world.

"We also gave a workshop in an international school on the Millennium Development Goals," he adds. "Now we're back, the next step is to share our experiences there with as many other students as possible. We have workshops organised in schools around Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Carlow."

"If it wasn't for the Dev Ed course in TY,

I wouldn't be involved in any of the work I'm doing now," stresses Gavin. "The independent learning about the developing world that I gained made me see the world in a very different way. Before I did Dev Ed, I only heard about the third world in the news, but never gave it much thought. Then we learnt just how big some of the problems facing us really are. It's up to us to help. If not us, who? If not now, when?"