Ideas aplenty at innovation showcase

YOUNG PEOPLE’S ideas on how to make the roads safer, tackle scams and make sexual education more accessible were exhibited in Dublin yesterday.

Protecting the environment, coping with suicide and combating poverty were other topics addressed by 3,500 students who attended the Young Social Innovators (YSI) showcase in the RDS.

The event, which encourages students to change the world for good, saw 5,500 young people undertaking 400 social projects around the country this year.

One of the projects, Scambusters, carried out by students of the Stella Maris Secondary School in Tramore, Co Waterford, attempted to prove that the proceeds of many charity clothes collections do not go where we think.

“Most of the stickers that come in through your door advertising charity clothes donations are fake,” Ruth Lawlor, a group member, said.

“We realised there were a lot of these stickers coming in and it was impossible they were all legitimate. Many of them had bad grammar, used mobile numbers rather than having an office base and didn’t have charity numbers.”

Ruth said that through research and meeting charities the group realised that fake collections were a national problem costing organisations millions each year.

“There are business people who take these clothes and sell them in foreign countries where they get around €40 a bag.

“They’re making a fortune but the charities are losing out.”

Ellen Battles and Apryl OHalloran, from Villiers Secondary School in Limerick, said their project The seX Files sought to make sexual education more relevant to young people.

“Basically our project is two books, one for girls and one for boys, which inform students about sex in an easygoing way,” Ellen said.

“It helps avoid the embarrassment and awkwardness of having a teacher pointing to diagrams that are biological and technical.

“The books are simple stories for teenagers by teenagers,” said Ellen.

Apryl said the research conducted by the group for the project, both in school and with the Limerick Rape Crisis Centre, generated surprising results.

“We thought it was absolutely phenomenal that virtually no teenagers said their experience of RSE had been good. Another thing that we found amazing was that 8.3 per cent of 10-year-olds are having sex often and not using contraception.”

Students from CBS Secondary School in Tralee, Co Kerry, said that after seeing people bereaved by deaths on the roads, they decided to highlight the danger of Ireland’s boy racer culture with their project For Sale, For Race.

“In our own area some people who drive modified cars use for sale signs as a code to organise races,” group member Graham O’Donnell said. “It’s a big issue. There are a lot of boy racers around who do dangerous stuff like switching off their lights to drive through junctions.”

To highlight the problem, the group staged a demonstration in Tralee which resulted in an invitation from a local TD to present their findings in Dáil Éireann.

A joint effort by Coláiste Bhride, in Carnew, Co Wicklow and St Peter’s College in Dunboyne, Co Meath called The Butterfly Effect won the Young Social Innovators of the Year award.

The students lived in poverty for week to highlight the issues and produced a book on poverty which featured contributions from Sebastian Barry, Seamus Heaney and Anne Enright.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, a founder of the YSI initiative, said she was encouraged by the depth of issues tackled by the entrants.

“Mental health stands out very much in the projects,” she said. “Unlike adults, who tend to bury these things, the issues are at the forefront of young people’s minds which means that they will be dealt with.”